


All Shall Come To This

by afterandalasia



Series: OTW Chat Trope Bingo 2016 [6]
Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), Frozen (2013), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe – Gender Changes, Alternate Universe – Jurassic World (2015) Fusion, Betrayal, Conspiracy, Crossover Relationship, Developing Relationship, Dragons, F/F, Female Hiccup Haddock, MTF Elsa, Mechanic Hiccup Haddock, Minor Anna/Hans (Disney), OTW Trope Bingo, Park Director Elsa, Reunions, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 18:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8499745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: You probably have to be a little mad to work on Dragon Island. Even the role of Park Director isn't immune, and Elsa Winters is kept on her toes by the Park's foibles, minor stumbling blocks, and of course the year-on-year push to make the park bigger, more exciting, and more impressive. What she does not expect, though, is to find herself facing the sister she thought she was long estranged-from, and more unthinkable still is what Hans Westergaard has been cooking up behind the Park's controlled facade.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It wasn't until I was finishing up this fic that I realised that it took me over a year to write. So! This was started before RTTE season two hit, and doesn't really take RTTE season 1 into account either. So Heather and Dagur are unrelated in this one.
> 
> Title is taken from the first Hiccup Series book, and the singing supper:  
>  _Once I set the sea alight_  
>  With a single fiery breath....  
> Once I was so mighty that I thought  
> My name was Death....  
> Sing out loud until you're eaten,  
> Song of melancholy blisss,  
> For the mighty and the middling  
> All shall come to THIS....
> 
> Submitted for my OTW Trope Bingo Free Space, which I am filling as Rule 63.

“Okay, Marisol,” said Elsa. “Give me the damage.”

Marisol did not even look round as she handed the morning's printout over her shoulder. She knew that her boss would be behind her, and indeed Elsa was right there to pluck the papers from her hand. “Nothing worthy of note. Usual report from the medics: a few cases of heatstroke, some bruised knees, one minor asthma attack quickly dealt with.”

“And our keeper teams?”

“Midday reports are all satisfactory. No fence issues. Veterinary team is reporting some sickness among a group of Gronckles, but they suspect that it's blue oleander again. We've got the palaeobotany team searching the paddock.”

Elsa sighed as she took another sip of her coffee. Blue oleander had been everywhere on the island even when it had first been opened; they had spent the last twenty years trying to eradicate it fully. But so much of their infrastructure was now here – not to mention the mythos that was Dragon Island – that it would be too costly to move on. “You're too good at this,” she told Marisol. “You'll be doing my job before I know it.”

“Oh no,” Marisol laughed, “I have no intentions of trying to emulate your magic with the board or with investors.”

She handed Elsa the tablet which it had been necessary to leave behind while she had been talking with the potential investors of the Weselton Foundation. It had felt wrong not to have it at hand, as it usually was; Elsa even slept with it beside her bed. She immediately pulled up her email and skipped through, sorting the messages into urgent, important and low-priority. Nothing urgent so far.

“If there weren't a danger of jinxing it,” she said wryly, “I'd comment.”

With a grin, Marisol shrugged, and turned back to her reports. Their notification system meant that any noteworthy event across the island was reported to the headquarters, from users of the medical facilities to any dragon outside their designated area. Just as she did so, there was a green flash, and Elsa wondered why she bothered opening her mouth some days.

“Dragon outside the authorised area,” said Marisol as soon as she saw the code in the header. She pulled it up, looking back over her shoulder to Elsa. “Probably one of the Gronckle relocations. They originally reported that only two were going to the veterinary area, it could be–”

As Elsa caught sight of the words on the screen, though, a hard knot formed in the base of her stomach. “That's not a Gronckle code,” she said. The Gronckles were one of the most established species on the island, one of the original core four.

The smile faded from Marisol's face as she, too, turned to the page and scrolled down, but it was Elsa who saw the appropriate line first.

“That's a Razorwhip.”

She heard Marisol's sharp intake of breath, but she was already putting down the tablet and straightening up, picking up the headset and connecting it to her phone. She strode down into the centre of the control room, as the huge screen depicting the island took on a red border and an alarm sounded.

“All right, people,” said Elsa loudly, before the chatter that always followed an alarm could get too loud. “We have a Razorwhip out of containment, moving from sector thirteen into sector twelve. Marie, I need you to notify the sector twelve keepers, that'll be the Night Terrors team, they'll be on their low shift. Bard, check in with the Razorwhip keepers, get them to report their actions in. Lars, I need contact with our Retainment Team five minutes ago.”

She was just grateful that it was the Night Terrors enclosure. They were asleep during the day, which meant that there were no visitors in the area. The downside, of course, was that it was a Razorwhip that was out of confinement. It was the newest dragon that they had, the most dangerous so far – well, that was how they were marketing it, at least. It was supposed to be launching next spring, just in time to pick up the next waves of interest and up the park's revenue once again.

“We're through!” Bard called. The top-right quarter of the screen opened up to an in-car camera feed, showing a woman with black hair and a grim expression driving so fast the windows were a blur.

“Heather!” said Elsa. She made a point of learning as many names as possible, and the small, tight-knit Razorwhip team had been in closer contact over the last few months. “Don't get yourself killed on the road!”

“The road isn't what I'm worried about,” the woman replied. She was in her early thirties, some years younger than Elsa, but already had scars visible on her forearms beneath her rolled-up sleeves. “It's Windshear.”

“The dragon out of location?”

“Yeah. Should've known she'd be the one to find a weakness in the fences.”

Almost all of the dragon enclosures were individual valleys, the better to provide airspace for them to fly without having to build the towers for the fences and ceilings too tall.

“Do you know how she got out, yet?” said Elsa. In the bottom-right corner, another frame opened up, showing their Retainment Team suiting up. They called themselves 'the Berserkers', but Elsa did not take part in their nicknaming. Elsa raised a hand in greeting to their current Captain, Dagur, which he acknowledged with a nod, but kept on the line to Heather. “Is there a danger of the others following?”

“They aren't herders like some of the others,” said Heather. “She was a half-click distant from any of the others, and we've got a team stationed where she made it through.”

“How did she do it?” repeated Elsa, resisting the urge to grit her teeth.

“Shorted out one of the panels with a combination of spines and venom. We're going to need better base units.”

Hopefully not something that any of the other dragons had the potential to do, but they would need to wait for the full damage report from the maintenance team. “The Night Terrors will probably be spending their day in the caves. Enlarge map, north third,” she called. Within seconds, the focus had obediently been moved. “That's three clicks south-south-west of where you are. Access roads for the keepers. If it's after them, that's where it's heading.”

“Thanks,” said Heather. The image jolted, blue sky opening up in the window behind her, and Elsa strongly suspected that she had just gone off-road. “Windshear is mine, that's why they sent me. I might be able to talk her down without sedation.”

“Too dangerous,” Elsa said immediately. “I want location only, relayed to our Retainment Team. Captain Dagur,” she said, with a wave to Lars to bring up the connection. “How close are you to moving out?”

“Readying the jeeps,” Dagur replied, with a feral grin. He had his helmet under one arm, his short-cropped red hair held back with a band that almost matched the blue tattoos down his face. “Let me switch to the remote link and we'll move.”

“Go,” said Elsa. Dagur reached in to turn off the feed, and above him Heather angrily shifted gear and clenched her jaw so hard that Elsa could see the muscles twitching in her temple. The Retainment Team had no friends among the keepers, their methods and weapons equally disliked, but right now they were the safest way to deal with an escaped dragon. “Heather, I need you to promise you won't get in their way. Their sedative doses are calculated to dragons, not humans.”

“I know.”

It didn't sound much like agreement, but the warning was enough. Within a minute, Elsa was back in contact with Dagur again, directing them to the appropriate sector. Her eyes were on Heather, though, and she knew in the moment that Heather's posture stiffened and her chin picked up that they had visual.

“Heather, speak to me,” she said, deliberately leaving both lines open at once. On the left hand side of the screen, she watched their dots coming together near the sector twelve caves. The green dots of the Night Terrors were clustered together, as they should be, with the white dots of Heather, the Night Terrors keeper team, and the Retainment Team all moving in at their various rates. But there was no sign of the red dot that should have marked the Razorwhip. “You have visual. Why aren't we getting a tracker signal?”

“Their scales can interfere with the signal,” said Heather. In Elsa's opinion, she did not look nearly as apologetic as she should have for keeping this information from Elsa. “We talked to the tech guys to get a boost on the towers in sector thirteen to make sure we always had them. We must be too far out.”

God preserve them. It was a damn wonder that the Razorwhips had not escaped before, if this was what they were up against. Elsa closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself exactly two breaths in which to be angry before focusing on the task at hand once again. “All right. Keep visual contact. I'm having your coordinates patched through to the Retainment Team so that they can get to you.”

This was going to need sorting out, and sorting out fast. Even in their off season, Dragon Island was the busiest park in the world, and they had not kept their remarkable safety rates by holding back from addressing issues in their security.

For a while, all that she could do was watch through the internal cameras as Heather and Dagur both raced on to their locations, then Heather slammed on her brakes and all but threw herself out of the car, shouting something that sounded worryingly like the dragon's name.

“Heather! Heather!” Elsa's voice was loud enough that one or two of her employees nearby looked round in surprise, but all that Elsa could think of was the fear of one of her keepers throwing themselves, without a weapon or very probably a plan, in front of one of the most dangerous dragons on the island. Her hand clenched so tightly that her nails almost cut into her palm. “Captain, tell me that you have a visual, because one of the keepers just went to confront that Razorwhip solo.”

There was only a momentary pause, Dagur leaning forwards in the passenger seat as one of his men drove, then his eyes lit up. “Oh, we have visual.” He whistled. “That is a beauty.”

The Retainment Team tended to be the last ones to see any of the dragons in the flesh; in an ideal world, they would not need to see them at all, but sooner or later all of the breeds ended up making trouble. Teething problems, Elsa always called it when she talked to the board, but every time that it happened it was terrifying. “Marisol, get me the sedation notes on Razorwhips, top right quadrant,” she called over her shoulder. The inside of Heather's car disappeared, replaced by the bare-bones notes which was insisted upon for every dragon species. “Captain, be aware of the scales. They're very high-density, almost impossible to get through. You'll need to go for the underbelly.”

“Heard and understood,” said Dagur. He licked his lips. “All right, men. Let's lock and load.”

They came to a halt and in turn piled out of their vehicle, and then all that Elsa and the others in the control room could do was wait. Through the connection she could hear the distant roar of the Razorwhip, and indistinct shouting from the Retainment Team and, most likely, Heather as well. Elsa kept her head high and her eyes on the screen, with only a muted order to zoom back out to the full island view once again. It would do no good to be so caught up in this that they missed another event.

Silence reigned. It was so complete that Elsa could hear the soft ding of Marisol's computer behind her, as another notification came in. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marie cross herself, lips moving silently. Elsa understood the urge.

Then there was a ragged cheer which had to be the Retainment Team. A sigh of relief left Elsa's lips, and she reached up to touch the earpiece she wore just for the need to move somehow. Moments later, one of the other Retainment Team slid back into view in the driver's seat of their vehicle, taking off his helmet.

“Ma'am. We've got it.”

“Good,” said Elsa, biting back the urge to say thank you instead. They were only doing what they had been hired for, after all, and she was director. She could hear some of her staff saying quiet words of thanks around her, though. “Get it back to the sector twelve and into containment. I'll have the veterinary staff come to check it out as soon as they have free members. Is Ms. Osland harmed?”

The man frowned.

“The dragon keeper. Is she harmed?”

“No, no,” he said. “Mad at us over the dragon, but not harmed.”

That was going to need dealing with, as well. Elsa nodded, then turned and climbed the steps again to stand beside her assistant. “Marisol, make sure that Heather heads back to base. Contact me if she doesn't. I'm going to go out and talk to the sector twelve team.”

She scooped up her tablet again as she left, but left the coffee behind. Something told her that she wasn't particularly going to need it today.

  
  


Once the dragon was actually sedated and strapped into its transport, it became almost a simple procedure to take it back to its original sector. Not that Elsa much appreciated it, from having to put off her meeting with the Fireworm keepers to standing in the middle of a muddy field while her Razorwing keepers and tracker technicians stood sheepishly in front of her and explained exactly what they had done to the towers.

She could have done it inside, of course, but something in her suspected that would not have had the same effect. To stand before them in their own world and berate them with the same confidence would get through, she was certain.

Or, at least, she desperately hoped.

With strict orders that all of the explanations were also to be filed in triplicate through official standards before the end of the week, she finally let them go, driving until she was sure that she was out of both sight and earshot before pulling over, parking up, and resting her head against the steering wheel while her anger and adrenaline faded.

Sooner or later, all of the dragons escaped. They learnt from it, improved the fences again, and kept going. But every new species of dragon had to be more impressive than the last, more dangerous, to keep people interested and coming back for more. Elsa knew that after Razorwhips, they would only get worse.

She checked her watch. There was still enough time to talk Fireworms, if she was lucky and the keepers had not already gone home for the evening. If not, she would have to find somewhere else in her schedule to squeeze them in. With a deep breath, Elsa turned on her in-car phone again, ready to dial through to the Fireworm Keepers. You had to be at least a little mad to work with dragons, and the Thorston Twins were certainly no exception. They were used to working strange hours, though, and might well be willing to add a couple of hours onto their usual time as a result.

She did not expect there to be a message waiting for her.

Everyone who could have wanted to contact her was at the control centre, and unless there had been another incident that needed her immediate attention, they knew that she was on the scene of something too important to be interrupted. Frowning, Elsa pulled up the number, and could have sworn that her heart dropped into her stomach when she realised that it was Westergaard.

One person on Dragon Island to whom she answered, and he had called at one of the few times in the past month that Elsa had not been within fifteen seconds of being able to answer her phone. She bit back a curse, and instead turned the rear view mirror to look herself over. Her hair was windswept, but smoothed back into place easily enough, and she pinched her cheeks to take advantage of the colour that the wind had given them. Even nowadays, a woman in her position had to take note of her appearance in a way that a man would not. It grated, but Elsa could handle it. She always had.

Calm and collected once again, Elsa dialled Westergaard back and counted the rings until he picked up. The in-car screen popped into life to show him, smiling and collected in his perfect three-piece suit. There were bright lights and white walls behind him, and the murmur of conversation.

“Ms. Winters. Such a pleasure to hear from you.”

“My apologies for not being in immediate contact, Mr. Westergaard,” she replied. “I had an urgent meeting with the Razorwhip handlers.”

 _“Oh?”_ He quirked an eyebrow just slightly.

Elsa folded her hands in her lap. “Nothing of concern. Is there something about which you need to speak to me?”

Westergaard gave her an airy smile, and a faint wave of his hand. “Not urgent, I assure you. I was hoping to speak to you in person, however. The Restricted Area laboratories? As soon as possible?”

That explained the white walls, although Hans Westergaard rarely had need to go into the actual laboratories of the island. The ones which the public saw were for show, carefully timed hatchings of the safer Gronckles or Nadders, staged ‘scientists’ doing their work. The real work of Dragon Island went on in laboratories that were far less visitor-friendly; it was far more complicated, and required far greater security. Elsa understood little more than the bare minimum of what they did, and she was not sure what Westergaard could possibly _need_ to know beyond that.

“Of course,” she said aloud. “I can be there in,” she calculated the time in her head, “just under fifteen minutes.”

 _“Make it twenty,”_ said Westergaard, in a tone that was just condescending enough to make Elsa’s smile falter, but more than sincere enough that nobody else would bat an eyelash. _”I hear the roads can be difficult in the fall.”_

“Thank you for your concern. I will see you shortly.” She hung up before she could say anything that she would regret, and allowed her now-false smile to fade as well. There went the Fireworms. As she started up the engine again and turned her car towards the laboratories, she dialled Marisol’s number. Her schedule was going to need some serious rearranging.


	2. Chapter 2

The Restricted Area laboratories were held in a squat, ugly building whose core had been built twenty years ago. It had been extended and developed over time, but their work had been so constant that knocking it down and starting again had never been an option. Besides, it was the single best access point to all of the underground workings of the island, the utility tunnels and underground roads that allowed them to get to all parts of the island no matter how bad the weather became. They had learnt that a long time ago.

It was busy when Elsa arrived, a major shift finishing work and heading home while the lighter night shift started up. Several of the scientists nodded and murmured greetings in passing, but while she nodded back she did not address them by name. It tended to make people uncomfortable if done on too wide a scale.

Her pass let her open any door on the island, and for that reason alone it was kept safely beneath her clothing at all times. As ridiculous as it might seem to wear a credit card-sized sheath on her arm just to hold her pass, it was better than the other option she had seriously considered, of having it implanted beneath her skin like a microchip. That was getting a little too like the trackers that they put in the dragons for it to be taken seriously.

Westergaard was waiting in the foyer, talking to a young woman whose back was to Elsa. Westergaard’s suit was immaculate, his hair crisply in place, and he looked just old-fashioned enough to be considered eccentric without it being laughable. The woman to whom he was speaking was dressed more casually, in jeans and a sweater, her red hair in twin plaits.

“Ah, Ms. Winters,” said Westergaard, raising his voice and waving her over with one hand. “There is someone whom I would like you to meet.”

The woman turned around, and Elsa thought that her heart might stop.

“Elsa?” the woman said. Her face lit up into a wide smile, and she ran across the room. Elsa stood frozen in place as the woman grabbed her hands and squeezed them tightly. It might have been years, but she was unmistakable. “Oh my god, it really is you! I didn’t believe it could be! I...” she trailed off, presumably at Elsa’s silence. “Elsa?”

“Anna.” It came out a croak. It had been over twenty years since Elsa had seen her younger sister, and of all the places she expected to meet her, it would not have been here. “It’s... Anna.”

Anna did not release Elsa’s hands, but she began to look wary, shrinking down a little. “Please don’t be mad. I hardly believed Hans when he said that he knew where you were, that you were using the name Winters now. But he said that he’d introduce us.”

“You know Mr. Westergaard?” Elsa managed. Her eyes were prickling, and she knew that if she said the wrong thing words would start tumbling out and she would not be able to stop them, and it was quite possible that she would burst into tears as well. From time to time, she had wondered what would happen if she met Anna again, by accident at some society gathering or through one of the investors who might still move in Anna’s social circle. But she had never thought it would really happen, and certainly not like this.

At the words, Anna blushed, and Westergaard stepped in to wrap one hand around her elbow protectively. He drew her back a step from Elsa. “That was the reason that I particularly wished for you to meet,” he said to Elsa, with a smile. “To let you be the first to know of our engagement.”

Elsa opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out and she closed it again immediately. Marriage? She did not know, nor wish to know, about Westergaard’s private life, but his family were absurdly rich, industrialists who had grown wealthy in the nineteenth century and remained so to this day. Anna’s family – not Elsa’s family any more, or at least it had not felt that way for many years – were old money, landed nobility from the days of feudal lords and absolute monarchies. And in any case, the idea that Westergaard could, of all people, become engaged to Elsa’s estranged sister seemed beyond absurd. The world simply did not allow for fantastical coincidences like that.

“Engaged? How long?” she asked, and it was a dozen questions bundled into one. How long had they been engaged, how long had they known each other, how long had Westergaard known that his fiancée was the sister of the director of his park.

“We are only just telling anyone,” said Westergaard smoothly. “Certainly we are not about to tell the public.”

Which did not answer anything that Elsa could have meant, but seemed like it did all the same. “Mr. Westergaard, may I have a word with A– my, my sister, in private, please?”

He looked surprised at her request, and Anna frowned and looked up at him uncertainly, but then he released her arm and patted her on the shoulder. “I believe Dr. Bulda’s office is currently available,” he said, with a sweep of his hand to his left, the first room on the corridor closest to which they stood.

Elsa’s legs felt like jelly, and her fingers shook so badly that she could barely access her pass to enter the door. The whole time, she could not look at Anna, and when a hand closed on hers on the door handle she almost cried out. She jerked away, whipping round, to see Anna looking hurt behind her.

“My apologies,” she said crisply. “I did not expect that.”

The door swung quietly closed behind them, and then she could not look anywhere but at Anna, who was fiddling with the cuffs of her sweater and biting her lip, the plaits and a lack of make-up making her look far younger than even her years.

“I totally thought that I was going to know what to say,” Anna blurted. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about this for so long, and I thought of so many things to say, and I just figured that I’d have the right thing when I met you. But I don’t.”

Getting words out at all was more than Elsa could do. She was more terrified than she had ever been by a dragon, more tongue-tied than she had been since... well, since she had been eighteen years old and the world had changed.

“I’m glad that it really is you, though,” said Anna. She looked at Elsa desperately, eyes wide. Apparently, she had not grown out of her freckles. “I worried that it was a mistake, even when Hans showed me the picture of you. I mean… I only knew you… before.” Trying to find the words, meaning well; Elsa did not know how to help her with them. “But I knew that… you wanted the name Elsa. And your hair, it’s the same colour even if it’s so long now.”

Well, Elsa supposed distantly, it was perhaps not as distinctive as Anna’s white stripe, but it was at least unusual. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. Fear flickered in Anna’s eyes. “You... caught me by surprise. I’m not normally this taciturn.”

Not that she was particularly talkative, but she spoke enough to do her job, and do it well. She could make up her mental scripts and rework them as conversations went along, talk to boardrooms and employees from the highest-level scientists to the interns working with the keeper teams. But apparently, her sister was another thing altogether.

Anna gave a tight, nervous laugh and tugged on her sleeve again. “It’s been so long,” she said. “Like, twenty years.”

“Twenty-three,” said Elsa softly. Anna had only been a child then. She did not really look twenty-eight now, at least not in Elsa’s eyes. “I...” her voice caught. No, this was not about her. “Are you well?”

“Well, I’ve met Hans, and that... he makes me happy.” Anna smiled and looked up almost hopefully, as if she were a child looking for her older sister’s blessing. The years between them had made Elsa some sort of impossible figure, and Elsa had been aware of it even then. “Things are getting better. After,” she swallowed. “Our parents.”

For a moment, it was as if the dark wave rose up in Elsa again, and she had to force it back down before it crested and crashed down over her. She still felt the tightness in her chest, the pain in her belly as she tensed unconsciously. “I’m... I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there. It was... complicated.”

Perhaps Anna had assumed that she had been too busy working. She knew that some of her other acquaintances had, presumed that the ice queen of business, Elsa Winters, did not have time even for the death of her own parents because she was so caught up in running Dragon Island. But it had been the opposite; Elsa had thrown herself into working to escape the pain of her parents, of never even getting to say goodbye, of never knowing whether it might have been possible for them, or for her, to say sorry.

It had only worked when she was doing her job. She had put in sixteen-hour days, and still been unable to sleep.

Now, though, Anna stepped forwards and reached out again, pain and tenderness coming together in her gaze. “It’s okay,” she said. “I... I understand. What’s important is that we can be together again now, like we used to be. It’s fate, Elsa, it has to be.”

Elsa realised that Anna wanted a hug. It sounded like such a simple thing, but panic gripped her again, and when she stepped back she saw the pain that Anna tried to hide, the betrayal lurking beneath it, in the fall of her mouth and the way that her arms sagged in the air. “I don’t believe in fate,” said Elsa.

She told herself that it had to be the truth.

  
  


It was raining as she left the laboratory. The rest of her conversation with Anna had been stilted words, and finally Elsa had guided them back out to rejoin Hans in the corridor. Then their words had turned even briefer, and Anna had stood at Hans’s side and held onto his arm and been _happy_ , had to have been happy, and Elsa had walked away as if she did not want to tear her baby sister away and hold her until the world ended and cry into her shoulder.

The rain grew increasingly heavy. It didn’t matter, the businesswoman in her head said firmly. There were plenty of indoor activities nowadays, and it was late enough in the evening that few people would want to be out exploring anyway. Now was the time for restaurants and hotels and movies.

Beneath her wheels, the road turned to mud. At the first sound of struggle from her engine, she gritted her teeth, and at the second she swore aloud and shifted down a gear to take on the ever-worse conditions. She should have taken the main roads, but the direct route was shorter, and quieter, and had seemed like a better idea in her raging anger.

The world blurred. Tears, Elsa realised, and wiped them with the back of her hand while trying to not lose concentration on the world for a moment. You couldn’t work on Dragon Island without being able to handle bad weather and road conditions, but part of that usually meant having the common sense to stick to decent road surfaces.

Something which she was apparently sorely lacking today.

Ahead of her, the road turned to a pool of indeterminate depth, a solid murky brown. Elsa braked, idling at the edge of the water, and tightened her hands on the steering wheel as she frowned at the pool’s surface. She had been assured that her car could handle whatever weather Dragon Island could throw at it; hell, she had been the one to create the rule that any company-provided staff vehicle had to be capable of handling even extreme weather.

Anything that staff bought in themselves, of course, was a different matter altogether. They were in the business of dragons, not mechanics.

The water was still, not flowing, which could only be in her favour. She shifted into first gear, grateful again for her insistence on manual vehicles which were better in weather conditions like this, and keep her foot steady on the gas as she eased the car into the water.

Smooth, even, steady. The thundering rain was only a minor concern, and she could see the far side of the pool, only twenty feet or so away. A glance in her wing mirrors told her that her rear wheels were in the water as well, but the car was fine. For the first time since leaving the laboratories, Elsa felt in control again, and lifted her chin to keep her eyes on the point where the road emerged.

An abrupt jolt made her scream aloud, a yelp of fear as the car jerked under her hands and twisted sideways. She clutched at the steering wheel, automatically slamming on the brakes, then the car slammed to a halt and thrust her forwards, seatbelt pushing the breath from her lungs.

Perfect. Elsa tried to ease the accelerator back on again, turning the steering wheel back along the axis of the road and out of what had to be the rut into which it had fallen. There was no response, and she could feel the whirring movement of the wheels in the mud. She eased off, tried again a little more firmly, but could only admit defeat as the wheels spun helplessly.

It happened to members of staff a couple of times a year, of course. It was just more embarrassing when you were the Director.

With one final slap to the steering wheel, Elsa sat back and rubbed her forehead. The water was at least twelve inches deep, the road surface was apparently rutted, and she did not even know where the nearest buildings were. There was no way that she could get this vehicle out by herself, in any case. She put one hand over her eyes, already planning damage control. If she contacted Marisol, it might be possible to arrange for someone to come and retrieve the vehicle without it being widely known who was driving it. Working on Dragon Island had to come with a certain sense of discretion.

“Fine,” she muttered to herself.

There was a knock on the passenger window.

Elsa jumped, whirling to face the window with her heart hammering in her chest. Through the downpour, she could make out a dark-haired figure, one hand held to their forehead while the other was raised towards the glass. As she looked at them in astonishment, they waved, and she quickly rolled down the window a few inches.

“Hi!” the person shouted; a woman, Elsa realised. “You need a hand?”

That, she thought, was a fine question coming from someone standing in the rain in a foot of water, in the middle of Dragon Island. Her astonishment was so complete that she could not even find words.

“If you could open the window a bit further...” the woman gestured.

Elsa unclipped her seatbelt and leant across, ready to open the car door, when the woman’s eyes went wide and she waved frantically.

“No, no! Don’t do that, you’ll flood the compartment. Just...” she put one arm through the window, too fast for Elsa to do anything but look bewildered, and pressed down on the button to open the window further.

The window was not even fully open before the rest of her followed through, a scramble of limbs and leather, and Elsa drew back sharply from the splashing of water and kicking feet that followed. The woman slid headfirst towards the footwell, banging her head on the dashboard on the way through, and muttered what had to be curses as she closed the window again behind her.

“Sorry,” she said, craning her head up to look at Elsa. “Didn’t think that through, did I?”

Elsa tried to find any response that felt even remotely appropriate, given the absurdity of the situation. ‘Who are you?’ was a bit anti-climactic once the woman was already inside her car, while ‘Can I help you?’ was not just an offer that she could not make but was not exactly what a company director should be saying. Though whether the woman was aware of _that_ was also questionable at this stage.

“When you were offering your assistance...” she let the words hang in the air pointedly.

“Ah, right, yes.” The woman squirmed around, almost putting her feet in Elsa’s lap on the way through, to something approximating upright. As she did so, she gave Elsa an excellent view of her prosthetic left foot, which looked to be some sort of metal and carbon contraption which was, admittedly, less dripping with mud than the opposite boot. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I can get your car out of here for you.”

Letting one hand rest on the steering wheel, and resisting the urge to drum her fingers, Elsa settled for a cool look. “Is that so?”

“I’m – I haven’t introduced myself, have I,” said the woman, with a sheepish grin. She seemed entirely unfazed by the fact that she had climbed in through the window of a six-figure car and was now dripping muddy water all over it, and Elsa was doing her best to meet her with matching calm. “My name’s Hiccup. I’m a mechanic.”

Elsa raised her eyebrows. “Hiccup?”

“Better than Hortense.”

She might have to admit that one. Her own name was somewhat old-fashioned, and any number of people had assumed that it was short for Elizabeth, but it was still perfectly reasonable. Hortense was not exactly a common name. For a moment, Elsa paused, actually nodding the once, then the name rang a bell and she frowned.

“Wait,” she said. “Hortense _Haddock_?” Perhaps it was the tone of her voice that made the woman in the passenger seat look embarrassed, or perhaps it was the way that Elsa narrowed her eyes.

Either way, when the woman spoke again, it was rather less confidently. “Yes.”

“Hortense Haddock of the Speed Stinger incident.”

“Publicity stunt,” said Hiccup quickly.

“It was only a publicity stunt because I told people that it was a publicity stunt,” retorted Elsa. As it was, the sight of a Dragon Island staff member on a motorcycle, being chased by a pack of Speed Stingers, had been an instant hit on Youtube and generated no shortage of publicity. It had taken some quick thinking on Elsa’s part to make the lie run so smoothly, however.

Hiccup groaned, apparently to herself. “And you would be Director Elsa Winters...”

Silence hung uncomfortably between them. The rain was thunderous on the windows and bonnets, windscreen wipers at double-speed and still barely able to make any headway.

“Hi,” said Hiccup flatly.

On one hand, Elsa had to admit, it probably reflected better on Hiccup that she had been willing to climb into the car of a stranger to help them out without knowing at all who it was. On the other hand, she had heard plenty about Hiccup’s exploits over the years, and the Speed Stingers had been only the latest in a line.

“And how,” Elsa said, “am I to presume that you are capable of getting this car out of here?”

“Well, despite my many and myriad faults, which I’m sure are going through your head at this very moment,” said Hiccup, clasping her hands together and pointing with her index fingers at the steering column. “I _am_ a mechanic. And I _am_ skilled when it comes to getting cars out of places that they aren’t meant to be.”

It was not as if she had no choice. She could still contact Marisol and arrange for the car to be collected, and honestly having a mechanic in the car with her was not an issue compared to having become stuck in the mud on an access road in the first place. But for all that she had heard about Hiccup’s incidents – the name Haddock had become all-too-familiar over the years, and it was rarely to do with Hiccup’s father and his sturdy, steady work with Thunderdrums – none of them had been to do with mechanics.

“Did you know that I made my own prosthetic foot?” said Hiccup, as if she were talking about the weather. Although that was perhaps not the best comparison given the current weather conditions. “I mean, Gobber gave me a hand with some of the early designs, but I put together the servos. It’s about the same weight as a flesh and blood foot, as well, just a little heavier to balance whatever boot I might be wearing.”

“I’m very impressed,” said Elsa politely. “Now, you said that you can get this car out of here?”

“Oh, yeah, simple. I mean, if you’ve got enough practice,” Hiccup added quickly. Whether it was her natural tendency to talk at such a high speed, or it had occurred to her that indirectly insulting her director’s driving skills was perhaps unwise, Elsa could not say. “So, if you let me, uh…”

She twisted in the seat, reaching over to put one hand on the back of Elsa’s chair and making as if she was going to swing one leg across, and Elsa realised that Hiccup meant to be in the driver’s seat in order to do so.

“Oh. Oh, right,” she went to lean back in her chair, as Hiccup twisted and huffed in the confined space, and shuffled as if she was going to slide over into the passenger’s seat, when common sense caught up and she put a hand on Hiccup’s chest. “Wait? No, no. Hang on.” She pushed Hiccup back into the passenger’s seat, and gestured towards the dash. “Slide that chair forwards. I’ll just…”

With a clunk, her own chair slid back several inches, opening up a wider gap between the two seats, and one less encumbered by the gearstick.

“Right, you stay there for a moment,” said Elsa, trying to sound as if she were just in another meeting rather than stuck in a car with a damp mechanic. She twisted to kneel on her chair, then put one hand on each seat and pulled herself through to the back of the car, out of the way. Mercifully, the seats were far enough apart that her hips did not get stuck between them.

From the back, she brushed her hair out of her face, and turned around again.

“There we go. Much easier.”

“I see why they put you in charge,” said Hiccup, climbing across. Unable to see her face, Elsa was not sure whether she was joking or not. “Okay, let’s get you out of this mud…”

Elsa sat back, and tried to pretend to herself that she was being chauffeured. It was not particularly successful, and not just because the car smelled of damp and Hiccup was encouraging the car along in a voice that was not quite under her breath. She had a headache starting, building mostly behind one eye, and was seriously considering taking some painkillers for it when she got back to base.

“So, where are you headed to again?”

“The Control Centre,” said Elsa. “I need to close down for the evening, see that everything moves over to the night shift properly. After today, we won’t have the Night Terrors open, but we still have the indoor evening events to arrange.”

“I heard about the Razorwhip.” Hiccup’s eyes met hers in the rear view mirror. “I’m sorry.”

“We learn, we improve. Nobody was hurt, and that’s the important thing,” she replied. Of course dragons were going to be smart enough to test their technology; humans had to use their brains, rather than just brute force, when it came to keeping them contained. “And the dragon is uninjured as well.”

Plus, of course, Captain Dagur and his men had been let off their leash for a while. Letting them get antsy was not at the top of Elsa’s to-do list.

“True,” said Hiccup. “I was talking to Heather about what happened, though. She seemed pretty angry at the Berserkers.”

Well, if one called oneself Hiccup, then calling the Retainment Team by their preferred nickname was probably to be expecting. “Ms. Osland is understandably very protective of her dragons, but she needs to understand that we have to put human safety first. Did she also tell you that she ran out in front of a rogue Razorwhip by herself, with no back-up or safety equipment?” She raised an eyebrow and gave Hiccup a pointed look.

“Does wanting to see the next valley count as rogue, now?” Hiccup shot back, without taking her eyes from the road. Elsa would admit, she had nerve to be arguing with the Director, for all that she was the one driving. “I go rogue every lunchtime, if that’s the case.”

“You don’t breathe fire, Ms. Haddock.”

“No, but believe me when I say that the Thorston twins make chilli hot enough to make anyone feel like they could breathe fire,” she said, slowing for another pool of water. This one, at least, was shallow enough that here and there the mud could be seen breaking the surface, and aside from the extra effort needed for the soft ground the car handled it easily. “I still say there’s a difference between _escaped_ and _rogue_.”

Elsa tapped her long nails against the arm of the car door. “All it takes is one person in the wrong place, and escaped can become rogue very quickly indeed, Ms. Haddock. And I am simply not prepared to take that risk.”

“Do you know that you do that?”

“Do what?”

With a slightly impish grin, Hiccup finally caught her eye in the rear view mirror. “Switch to calling me ‘Ms. Haddock’ when you’re annoyed with me.”

“Perhaps I was simply hoping to remind you of the nature of our professional relationship,” said Elsa coolly.

Hiccup shrugged. “Perhaps.”

She remained infuriatingly silent as they continued on, until the high tower of the Control Centre came back into view once again. They were some way down the road when Elsa remembered her seatbelt, and for a moment she considered trying to surreptitiously slide it back on, but they were still jostling along at a very low speed and it was probably not worth it by now. Instead she tried to look as collected as she could, and watched the thick jungle as it passed by. The fact that it was obscured by particularly heavy rain was probably not helping the appearance, though.

“Right,” said Hiccup, coming to a halt and pulling on the handbrake. “This is where I leave you, I think. Haven’t got this seat muddy,” she added, glancing down, “just a bit wet. Sorry about that. Easy enough to blame the weather, though.”

Leaning forward in her seat, Elsa frowned. “What? You’re just going to stop in the middle of the jungle?”

“Oh, there’s an old maintenance entrance to the underground about a hundred metres that way,” said Hiccup, with a gesture off the road. “Right beyond the tree that splits… it’s probably hard to see if you don’t know that it’s there,” she admitted. “But I’ll be fine. This is pretty waterproof,” she said, tapping the shoulder of her tight-fitting leather jacket.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, honestly. And I can even go out the door and not the window this time,” she said, cracking the door open as if to prove her point. “Thanks for the lift!”

Before Elsa could do more than open her mouth to reply, Hiccup had climbed out of the car and closed the door behind her, before running off through the rain and vanishing into the impenetrable green of the jungle. Elsa closed her mouth again and shook her head, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. Thanks for the lift? As if Elsa had been the one to do Hiccup a favour? From what Elsa had seen in reports, Hiccup was half a menace and half a mechanical genius, three times entering into their training programme to work with the dragons and three times getting herself into dangerous situations instead. Finally, their head mechanic had approached Hiccup himself to recruit her, and it had finally meant something resembling peace on the matter of the Haddocks.

With a sigh, Elsa climbed into the front again and settled into the driver’s seat, moving it forwards so that she could reach the pedals again. Hiccup must have been even taller than she realised. In any case, she would need to send a personal email of thanks for a discreet rescue from the mud, and perhaps a quiet word with their head mechanic about Hiccup’s help.

What Hiccup was _doing_ in the middle of Dragon Island, Elsa honestly did not want to know. She had no doubt that it would only result in a headache if she did.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, she was halfway through preliminary plans about redirecting teams to rebuild the fence between the Razorwhip and Night Terror enclosures when her phone went off. Though the Razorwhips were not yet open to the public, the Night Terrors were the only night-time dragon attraction on the Island, and they had to be open again as soon as possible. Giving Marisol an apologetic look, Elsa looked at her phone, but she could have sworn that her blood ran cold when she saw that it was Hans Westergaard again.

“Good morning, Mr. Westergaard,” she said brightly, on answering the phone. Marisol raised an eyebrow, then pulled over her tablet and started typing, slipping easily into some other project. “I was not expecting to hear from you this early.”

“Good morning to you too, Elsa. Anna says ‘hi’.” He pronounced it delicately.

“Please send her my best wishes,” said Elsa, that carefully-groomed phrase she had nurtured for so long that she could make it sound almost real. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Oh, Anna and I were just wondering whether you would like to join us for lunch today. I have a reservation, overlooking the Deathsong enclosure.”

“Of course, Mr. Westergaard,” Elsa heard herself saying, before she could think of how terrible an idea it was. She had built a career about saying the right thing at the right time, and knowing just how much to interact with people in order to have them do what she asked. It sounded cold, sometimes, but she knew that it was a necessity in her job. She was never unkind to people, simply practical. “What time?”

“One-thirty.”

“I’ll see you there. Please give Anna my regards.”

“Of course. See you then.”

The phone clicked down again without waiting for her response, and Elsa took a deep breath as she put it down again. That was not particularly what she needed today. Marisol looked at her carefully, waiting for her response, but Elsa forced a smile back onto her face before she looked up. “All right. We need to change my plans regarding my lunch, but that should not be a problem.” The main issue was that her lunch would usually be barely half an hour, and even then she would usually be reading her emails as she ate. She sincerely doubted that Hans Westergaard would expect less than an hour of her.

“Miss Corona will be disappointed not to meet you, but I’ve had meetings with her before,” said Marisol, with a shrug. “I can take that for you.”

“Thank you,” said Elsa, with an actual sigh. One would have thought that after this many years, she would have learnt to leave some leeway in her scheduling, but it seemed that her tasks only multiplied with time.

A pity that it was Rapunzel, perhaps, but then again perhaps it was for the best. They were good business partners, but were careful not to step over into being friends again; of course, neither of them could have expected to meet on a professional basis over a decade after university and their messy, inexperienced excuse for a relationship, but they had to make the best of it. Corona Ltd was, however, the best art and marketing firm with whom Elsa had ever worked, and both of them were professional adults and quite capable of keeping their businesses in the best position they could.

“So first up is the meeting with the Thorston twins about the Fireworms,” said Marisol.

“I’ll get my asbestos gloves,” Elsa replied, voice dry. It seemed a wonder, some days, that the twins had any fingers left, but somehow they managed it. And the Fireworms, despite their small size, were very popular with visitors; the twins themselves might have had something to do with that, with their daily shows. “Let’s take the main roads,” she added, as they got to their feet and scooped up their jackets. “The back roads are hell at the moment.”

  
  


She arrived at the restaurant five minutes early, but knew in her gut that Hans and Anna would already be there. It was raining again, and Elsa swore all the way up in the lift. She ducked into the toilets before even approaching the maître d’, cleaned the mud off her shoes and dried her skirt under the hand dryer as best she could, and would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all were she not all-too-aware of her heart pounding in her chest.

At least nobody entered the toilets and caught the director cleaning her shoes with toilet paper like a schoolgirl. That was the best thing she could say about her week so far, unfortunately, which did not make for much. She touched up her make-up, grateful that she could get away with not wearing much at all in the hideous weather here, and draped her damp jacket as elegantly as she could over her shoulder before walking out and breezing into the restaurant like she owned the place.

Which she may not have done, but she was not _that_ far off.

The maître d’ showed her to the table, and Hans got to his feet to draw out the seat for her. It was old-fashioned chivalry, of course, but Elsa wondered sometimes whether coming from Hans in particular there was an ulterior motive. She said nothing, smiled politely, and thanked him as she sat down.

Anna looked almost as nervous as Elsa felt. She looked uncomfortable in the slightly more formal clothes that was wearing, and Elsa was not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry that Anna was still just the same about clothes as she had been at five years old. As it was, she tried not to look too fragile when she smiled.

“I’m so glad you could join us,” said Anna, words rushing out like they were a confession. “I know you must be really busy, you’re the director, and this is just lunch, but–”

“Of course I made time,” Elsa said. As soon as she said the words, she hated the phrasing, as if it had somehow been work to find time for Anna in her schedule. As if she would not have thrown everything away in order to grab this time, as terrified as she was of doing something wrong with it. “I’m glad to be here,” she added.

Outside, the Deathsong cried out, but the thick glass and carefully-modulated filters turned the sound into something eerily beautiful inside the restaurant. The dragon itself was stunning, of course, and two restaurants overlooked its enclosure; one, always crowded and, for the park, inexpensive; the other much higher, with more impressive views and more… exclusive prices. Elsa had not needed to ask which one Hans had meant.

“So… how have you been?” said Anna, with an awkward shrug and then a poorly-hidden flinch at her own clumsy words.

Twenty-three years. Elsa willed her hands not to shake as she folded them in her lap. “I got a business degree,” she said.

The simple words utterly belied the work that it had taken to register as an overseas student, working evenings and weekends for experience more than for money. In many ways, she knew, she had been lucky; at eighteen, she had already spoken four languages, and before leaving she had moved her savings to a private account which her parents did not know about. Transitioning might have made things harder, but she pushed through all the same, and it had been worth it for every time that someone had said _madam_ or _she_ , worth everything that she had left behind and all the pain it had caused.

“Changed my name,” was all that she said aloud; Anna nodded, and Hans went on smiling politely as if he was not quite sure what she was talking about. As far as she knew, he was not, but she had learnt early on not to underestimate him. “Although technically that was _before_ the business degree. I came to Dragon Park as a senior manage thirteen years ago.”

“And Ms. Winters and I have been working together for much of that,” Hans cut in silkily. “The Park has seen excellent growth during that time.”

“Thank you.” Elsa had learnt long ago how to make her gratitude sound true at all times. Sometimes she wondered herself where the line was drawn. All the same, she turned straight back to Anna. She might have been less obvious about it, more polite, with anyone else, but she truly and desperately wanted to make Anna the centre of her attention again. “It’s… not all that exciting. What about you?”

Anna laughed nervously. “I was thinking more of today, but, okay,” she said. “I, um, well I got into estate management, since, you know…” she shrugged, and took a sip of her wine. Even after all these years, it still seemed strange to think of her as old enough to drink. “And I manage that now. I met Hans at a charity fundraiser,” she added, with a sweet smile in his direction.

“Conservation?” Elsa guessed. Anna looked surprised, and nodded. “The Westergaards are well known for it,” she said. “It ties in with the de-extinction projects of the Park, I suppose.”

“Like the re-introduction of genetic diversity in cheetahs,” said Hans. “If we can get there before the animals are extinct, then we don’t have to try to patch the DNA, and it works out better for the animal. Win-win.”

“I was reading about that!” said Anna. “That said Thomas Westergaard, though–”

“My brother,” said Hans, although Elsa caught the way that his voice tightened. He smiled again. “He has a particular love of the savannah. Might be related to the fact that he did not inherit the family red hair,” he added, with a wink to Anna, and she giggled.

Elsa smiled, even though hearing Anna laugh again also made her want to cry. She just hoped that she would be able to get through the meal still in one piece.

  
  


In the end, she had to extricate herself from the restaurant by explaining that she simply could not miss her meeting with the toy supplier from Santoff Clausen, and even then swore as she changed back into her flat driving shoes and probably drove a little bit faster than she should have done in the rain. But she had at least worked with Nicholas St. North for some years, and knew that he would not be offended if she turned up in less-than-perfection condition.

The rain continued to pound down. It was that season, she supposed, when the best of the summer weather was past, and their numbers started to drop off into the autumn. Some dragon aficionados would deliberately come in with the rains, either because it was quieter or because the dragons in general loved the rain. In fact, the only time that the Snaptrappers could reliably be viewed was when it was raining, and despite the number of signs that they put up with that message, people still managed to be disappointed not to see them under the blazing sun. A pity that they did not swim, like the Seashockers, or they could just put in another underwater exhibit.

Still, she had to admit that it could still make her smile to see the Snaptrappers splashing happily about, letting their mouths loll open in the air, or even rolling around in the mud. The Park played up the danger of the dragons, of course, and it was more than justified with how dangerous they really were. But it was nice to see them as safe, happy animals, well-fed and cared-for within the best enclosures that science could prepare for them.

Anna had revealed that she was going to be at the park for only a couple more days, and Elsa had ached to say that if she had known, she would have taken some of her rarely-touched holiday. Or possibly fled in a panic, one or the other. It was a little hard to tell, in hindsight.

She made it through her meeting with North with a minimum of catastrophes, most of their time spent on outlining the marketing that would go alongside the introduction of the Razorwhips. The dragons themselves were well-established, but there was still work to be done with the artistic teams, toy suppliers, media outlets, and seemingly everyone with whom the park worked. One of the more unexpected sides had come from the realisation that Razorwhips required a high intake of certain nudipleura which the park had then found itself in the absolutely unbroken ground of farming. Still, there were many that were attractive in their own right, and North’s plans to make them available as toys as well sounded quite good. Elsa knew better than to lean too much on the idea, though; they were food, in the end, not dragons, and however pretty neither flew nor breathed fire.

The Thorston twins did not even seem to have noticed how much her meeting with them had been delayed by, and excitedly talked about how their ‘rapport’ with the leader of the hive was building and how they had various new ideas for their shows.

Making a mental note to keep track of how much thermite they had access to, Elsa otherwise signed off on their requests and plans. They knew how to work an audience, and despite going for some years their shows had no signs of flagging. They also contributed significantly to the success of the park’s working relationship with the Neverland company, both when it came to its mercurial founder Zarina and when dealing specifically with their fabric engineer Edna Mode.

Even if Elsa had _changed_ her name, she had to say, she had never thought of going by a _single_ name. But then again, her heart had been set on the name Elsa since she was very young, and it was somewhat less unique than _Zarina_.

Although she had plucked up the courage to exchange phone numbers with Anna again, it was not until late at night, once she knew that the evening entertainments were well underway, the Night Terrors would be out again as usual, and the rest of the dragons were safely away for the night, that she was even able to look at her phone. Her apartment was quiet around her, windows showing a sweeping uninterrupted view over the park that visitors would have killed for and which had in fact been used for more than a few promotional shots over the years. Elsa curled into one of the soft, comfortable armchairs – fabric, not leather; she did not have to worry about appearances in her apartment and thus did not care to and looked at the number for a long, silent time.

Anna had not texted her. Perhaps she was simply busy as well; the park technically ran twenty-four-hour entertainment, although it was naturally biased so that there were more things available in the day and early evening, and there was every chance that Hans was taking her to some evening event or behind-the-scenes tour. Perhaps even now, Anna was watching the Night Terrors form their patterns in response to the images that the park played on the big screens in their paddock, or was getting to see dragons sleeping in the quiet of their cages – from behind the safety of thick glass, of course. It was still incredible to see them from only five or ten feet away, as was possible with some species.

She would like that, Elsa thought. Sleeping Speed Stingers, hanging from their tails, or Zipplebacks tucking their heads beneath their wings.

So perhaps it did not mean anything. But Elsa could not shake the worry, the feeling that Anna had looked at the number and decided not to be the first one to text or call. It would deserve her right, Elsa supposed, after all of her years an ocean away; but she had seemed so excited that day. Elsa tucked her feet up beneath her, tugged on a tendril of her hair that had come loose, and struggled with herself.

She wanted to contact Anna. God, she wanted it as much as she had ever wanted anything. She just wasn’t sure if she had the right.

When she finally plucked up the courage, approaching 23:00, she drafted and redrafted it a dozen times, deleted it twice, and still found herself profoundly unsatisfied with the end result.

               Elsa here. Hope that you had a good day today. Take care.

She felt embarrassed with herself as she put the phone on her bedside table and closed her blinds, more out of habit than from actually being overlooked. She went through her evening routine with careful, clinging precision, from washing her face and brushing her hair to making sure the oestrogen patch was not slipping from her upper thigh. By the time that she fell asleep, there had still not been a response, but exhaustion got the better of her nerves all the same.

She was awoken by the sound of her phone going off, and went from dreams to full alertness in a second as she snatched the phone over and squinted at the suddenly-bright screen. While it was not _necessarily_ an emergency, getting a text or call this late at night was _usually_ an emergency, and always worth treating as one.

She had swung her legs out of bed and was getting ready to stand up by the time that she realised that it was Anna, and the adrenaline rush of waking up only seemed to intensify, heart pounding and mouth drying out. All the same, Elsa hesitated over opening it, hit all over again by the sense of _you do not deserve this_.

Taking a deep breath, she finally hit ‘open’.

               It’s great!! Can’t believe I never came here before. And tha

The text cut out mid-word. Elsa narrowly resisted the urge to turn the phone over as if looking for a P.T.O. on a letter, but couldn’t help a smile. Somehow, even after all these years, _that_ felt like Anna as well.

Sure enough, her phone buzzed again a moment later.

               nk you for meeting us for lunch. I really enjoyed it. Would you be free to meet again for dinner tomorrow? Just you and me, Hans is busy anyway. I’d really like to talk to just you.

A third text quickly followed.

               Whoops

Probably the accidental truncation; Elsa laughed, soft and fond, eyes having adjusted to the light now. She ran her fingers gently down the edge of her phone, and swallowed the lump in her throat. A chance. A second chance that she never thought she would get, after twenty years and more. She certainly did not expect to get another text immediately afterwards.

               By the way, Hans had an ID card made for me, so I can meet you wherever.

Elsa’s fingers moved more slowly than usual as she readied her message back.

               I’d love to. See you then. Sleep well.

She went back and forth over adding the ‘sleep well’, trying to work out whether it was too familiar or not, too much when they had only seen each other again twice and it had only been two days. But in the end, she could not help it, just having to wish Anna goodnight in the way that she used to when they were both children.

Only after she had hit send did her smile fade. Those had been the last words that she had spoken to Anna before she left, as well. Anna might have been asleep as Elsa had tucked her in that night, Elsa was not sure, but she almost certainly did not remember anyway. She had only been five years old. A long time ago indeed.

Elsa sat hunched over her phone for a few minutes, waiting to see if there would be another response, but nothing more was forthcoming. Hopefully, that meant she really was asleep already. With a bittersweet smile on her lips, Elsa slipped back beneath her cooling sheets, but the second time around it was harder to slip back to sleep again.


	4. Chapter 4

She arranged to meet Anna for the evening at the Upper Deathsong restaurant again, knowing that it was the best on the island and having seen how amazed with the huge dragon Anna had been the day before. It was spitting with rain, but Elsa had remembered an umbrella this time around, and had no difficulty making it to the restaurant with time to spare and only a slight nervous shake of her fingers to give herself away. Not knowing what Anna might want to say, or ask, she had reserved a quiet booth in one corner of the restaurant, and asked the maître d’ to leave some space around them if at all possible. The restaurant never filled to capacity, so it should have been fine anyway, but she was still relieved when he said yes.

Sipping her bottled water, she waited, checked her phone a couple of times and tried not to grow more nervous. It wasn’t particularly successful. She did not know whether Anna was the sort to be punctual or not, and the only person who would conceivably be able to tell her was Hans. Even if he were not busy, that was not a request she was willing to make.

As fifteen minutes ticked on to twenty, then approached thirty, she gave in to the fluttering panic in her chest and called Marisol. It only took a couple of rings before her unflappable assistant picked up.

“Elsa. What is it?”

“Okay, I know this isn’t technically work,” said Elsa immediately, “but I need some help.”

“Say the word.”

“Hans gave m– my sister an ID card, yesterday. I’m guessing that it’s pretty high-level. Can you pull up a list of recently-assigned cards?”

 _“Sure_ ,” said Marisol. It was one of relatively few things that Elsa could not do from her phone; she had not bought her tablet with her, not wanting the temptation of hiding behind her work or anything of that sort. Elsa listened so hard that she thought she could almost hear the tapping of Marisol’s fingers, although that was logically impossible. “ _Okay, I got it. Level six clearance, assigned two days ago. Do you want the number?”_

Level six? Marisol was only level eight, and Elsa was one of perhaps four people in the world who had level ten clearance. Most of the keepers were only level three or four. For a moment, Elsa was too astonished to respond, then she cleared her throat and pulled herself together. “No, no,” she said. “I need you to pull up the tracking chip in it.”

 _“Is everything okay?”_ Marisol was doubtless doing as Elsa requested, such was her dedication, but there was genuine concern in her voice. Of all the people on Dragon Island, she was the one to whom Elsa would probably consider herself closest. Certainly a friend, although something like _best friend_ would probably still have seemed too much.

“It’s probably nothing,” said Elsa. “She’s supposed to be meeting me for lunch and she’s running late. You’re probably going to tell me that she’s just outside the restaurant or something, and–”

“She’s in the Restricted Laboratories,” said Marisol abruptly. Elsa could have sworn that her blood run cold. “Or at least, her card is. Let me – she’s not with Mr. Westergaard.”

Elsa shot to her feet, grabbing her purse and coat and striding across the restaurant before Marisol had even finished her sentence. “I’m going. Thanks, Marisol.”

Her hand was shaking as she vaguely recognised Marisol’s farewell and disconnected the call. Her heart pounded in her ears, she felt as awake and terrified as she ever had both at the same time, she she told the maître d’ in curt words that her reservation would not be needed. The man simply nodded; they knew that Elsa would pay her cancellation fee.

In the elevator down, she was already changing into flat driving shoes, pulling on her coat and readying her umbrella. Something pulsed beneath her skin, a knowledge that something was _wrong_ , and she did not say a word as she strode over to the car, got in, and drove into the now-steady rain.

“I’m going to find you, Anna,” she murmured to herself. After so many years, some parts of being an older sibling did not go away, and now she could feel the itching beneath her skin that told her Anna was in need of some protection.

  
  


She drove faster than usual, hands tight on the steering wheel. Even _she_ rarely went into the Restricted Laboratories, and more worryingly you had to have level eight access just to get in. Anna should not have been able to. It was also right on the north-western corner of Dragon Island, set into a huge mountain that told of the island chain’s past, a string of islands all spewing up from the same tectonic hotspot. It had been a long time since this island had been volcanic, but the volcanic rock remained, and the mountain beside.

It was not part of the main laboratories. Investors might be taken around those, even if there might be NDAs involved, but _nobody_ outside of the park’s top staff went into the Restricted Laboratories. There were plenty of staff who did not even know which roads led to it, and any number of interns who never even learnt of its existence.

The main labs developed the dragons, provided a demonstration of how their DNA was gathered and manipulated. But the Restricted Laboratories did the preliminaries, sequencing and working, even with fractions of fossils that science had not identified. The work done there was the fringe of the fringe, the most secret of secrets, and even Elsa rarely stepped foot there.

Her hands shook as she shifted gear. As she reached the gates, she had to pull right over to the side of the road, and reach out to offer her card to the machine. Each second that it took for the gates to creak open seemed to ache against her, and when her wheels spun the mud for a split-second she growled beneath her breath. Most un-director-like behaviour, she knew, but in the privacy of her car she allowed it to slip for a moment.

As she was approaching the facility, her phone rang, and she scrambled to accept without even looking. “Anna?” she said.

“ _No_ ,” said Hans Westergaard, sounding genuinely surprised. “ _And I don’t think that mistake has been made before._ ”

“Mr. Westergaard, my apologies,” said Elsa, the words coming out clipped. In the privacy of her own head, she swore at herself for how she had fumbled with the phone, how frantic she suspected that she looked. She did her best to sit back and look more comfortable in her seat, even as she drove probably faster than she should have done towards the laboratories. “I was awaiting a call from Anna.”

“ _So I surmised. Is everything okay?_ ”

In stark contrast to Marisol, Hans Westergaard was not someone that Elsa would ever consider a friend. “Quite all right. Probably just a time zone issue.” It would not be the first time that visitors to Dragon Island had been caught out, she would admit, although that _something_ still curling in her gut told her that was not what this was.

“ _Good, good. Yes, I just wanted to let you know that I’m in a meeting with some of the scientists up at the Restricted Laboratory. If you’re busy, though, then I won’t trouble you; it isn’t urgent. Just a brief report._ ”

The words caught her attention, but she kept her eyes on the road rather than looking at the phone with as much suspicion as she was feeling. It seemed highly coincidental that Hans should tell her about a meeting with the scientists just as she was on her way to the very place that Anna was, and that he was not supposed to be. Marisol had said that Anna was not with him, and even if Elsa spent more time with lawyers and businessmen than around the enormous fire-breathing reptiles the park kept, she still meant it quite literally to say that she trusted Marisol with her life.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said, with a smile that felt taut but which she hoped still looked polite. “I’ll be sure not to contact you unless it’s an emergency.”

 _“Of course,”_ Hans replied. He waited a moment longer, as if expecting something more, than smiled as cold as a glacier. _“I’ll speak to you soon, Ms. Winters.”_

The screen blinked out, and Elsa slowed to a halt, letting the engine idle. Something told her that Hans did not want her going to the Restricted Laboratories, and she was growing increasingly concerned about _why_. And if he was worried about her location, he had the choice of security cameras and of tracking her ID card the same way that she had tracked Anna’s.

There wasn’t much that she could do about the security cameras; they were ubiquitous on the island and even more important around areas such as this. But her ID card, and its chip… well, perhaps there was something there.

A couple of dark silver scales shimmered in the footwell of her car; she had not managed to get her car valeted since visiting the Razorwhip keepers, and she had tracked some of their fallen scales in on her shoes. Probably the Razorwhip that Heather Osland had been tracking, even – Windshear, she thought its name had been – considering it had apparently been that one’s work to get out of the fence.

Elsa bent down, grabbed a couple of the scales off the floor, and slipped them either side of her ID card within its wallet. The scales blocked any tower that wasn’t boosted, the techs had said. She was about to continue on when she remembered the one other way to reach the Restricted Laboratories, a combination of doors that nobody without level ten clearance would be able to open. Putting the car back into gear and with determination setting in her eyes, Elsa pulled her car around into a three-point turn and headed back towards the gates.

She made it through, having to move one Razorwhip scale slightly for the machine to let her out again, and was reassured in her use of them in doing so. As soon as she turned the first corner from the gates, however, she pulled up against the treeline, almost grabbed her heels on automatic before catching herself, and simply stuffed her phone and car keys down her bra instead. She abandoned her umbrella, gave up on her jacket that was far more of a business blazer than any actual use against the rain, and stepped out of her car with adrenaline still making her skin feel hot.

It was about a mile from the gates to the labs themselves. Years had passed since she had last used the underground tunnels, when a couple of Fireworms had managed to get loose and make their way down there and Elsa had wanted to survey the damage which they had managed to do. Fortunately, it had been minimal. Now she waded through the dense bushes and trees, leaving her clothes sticking to her skin with how wet they were, and pushed her way through to the service entrance that hunkered behind the treeline.

The building was squat and ugly, concrete painted in dull green and brown to supposedly blend it into the trees. It worked well enough for aerial photographs, and that was generally enough. Even when the door opened to her pass, she had to put her shoulder to it to force it open, and when she tried to flick on the lights there was no response.

“These need a maintenance sweep,” she muttered to herself. At any other time, she would have called Marisol and ordered one immediately, but she was too worried about Anna to be chasing after her maintenance crew. Instead, she used her phone as a torch to make her way through the second door to the steep metal steps that led down to the tunnels that ran from building to building.

They varied in size, but the main trunk had been deliberately built like another Underground system, the trunk and main branches wide enough to drive along. Unfortunately, there were no vehicles in sight, but as Elsa reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped out she was greeted by the movement-sensitive lighting that was, at least, still functioning.

She checked her phone; no signal, underneath this much metal and concrete. Well, at least it had plenty of battery left. Tucking it back away and wrapping her arms around herself, she set out along the underground road and the artificial, yellow lights.

  
  


Despite herself, she checked her phone more than once along the way, but there was still no access. A couple of small tunnels branched off the main one, but mostly it just continued on in one implacable straight line towards the Restricted Laboratories. Time ticked on, until it was over three quarters of an hour since Anna should have met her in the restaurant, and Elsa could not help a pang of worry that her sister had tried to contact her in return but been unable to contact her.

Finally, she saw the stairs and elevator that linked the tunnels to the laboratories above, and hurried her pace to reach them. Her flimsy flat shoes, although fine for driving, were not really designed for walking long distances on concrete and were starting to rub about the heel. It was all that Elsa could do not to run or to jog the last couple of hundred metres, and all that drew her up short just a few metres away was the sight of the doors of the elevator opening.

Instead stood a motorbike, and Hiccup Haddock. Off the top of her head, Elsa did not know what Hiccup’s access level was, but as a mechanic she would have a level suitable to give her access to the underground maintenance areas. So it was not her presence, but the motorbike and the exceptionally guilty look on her face, that made Elsa stop in her tracks.

For a few long seconds, the two women looked at each other.

“Haaaaah,” said Hiccup finally.

“What are you doing down here, Ms. Haddock?” said Elsa crisply. She held her chin up, and all but dared Hiccup to ask what the director of the park was doing in the underground system as well.

“I,” Hiccup drew the word out, “am – just about to leave.” She patted the handle of her motorcycle. “Easier to get around down here than up in the mud, sometimes.”

“Yes, I can see that. But what brings you to the Restricted Laboratories in the first place?”

The guilty silence was more than enough. Elsa rolled her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter. Stay in the elevator.” Marching over, she selected the ground floor. “For now, you will stay with me, and I will talk to you shortly.” She saw Hiccup wince. As the elevator rose, Elsa pulled out her phone again, keeping her eyes fixed on it as the signal bars flickered back into life, but there was still nothing from Anna. Nothing from anyone. Her heart still felt as if it was beating too fast, as if she had been running along the tunnel instead of just walking briskly.

Hiccup fidgeted. “Are you okay?”

“Nothing you need to be concerned about,” Elsa said sharply, then regretted it as she saw the pain and embarrassment on Hiccup’s face before she looked away. She sighed as the elevator reached the ground floor, with a low access level exit to the garage and a higher one to the facility itself. “I am late for a meeting with my sister. Here, put your motorbike in the garage.”

She opened the appropriate door, and kept her finger on the button to keep it open as Hiccup wheeled her motorcycle outside. Elsa hoped that it was not the one that the Speed Stingers had chased, but it showed no signs of scratches or punctures. She tried calling Anna, but it went straight to voicemail and she jabbed the end call button.

“If there’s anything that I can help with…” said Hiccup.

“Just stay with me. You won’t have the access for where I need to go.” With the mechanic back in the lift with her, Elsa his the button for the top floor, and offered up her access card before the lift even started moving. As she slid the Razorwhip scale back into place over the chip afterwards, she saw Hiccup’s curious gaze, but did not say anything.

Her hair was coming loose. Elsa did her best to smooth it back into place, but did not have time to entirely redo her bun before the doors slid open again. No matter. No matter as well, she told herself, that her shoes were muddy and the shoulders of her shirt were spotted with rain. She was still the director, and this was still her park.

“I need to find Dr. Miyazaki.” she said briskly. “She’s usually in her laboratory.”

The corridors were quiet, which was not necessarily unusual around the Restricted Laboratories where work was intense and all-consuming, but it still made Elsa feel uncomfortable. She smoothed down her hair again as she strode down the corridor, caught off-guard by a moment by the different sound of her footsteps before realising that she was in flats instead of her usual heels, and that Hiccup’s distinctive footsteps were right behind her as well.

“Look, I can wait outside for you,” said Hiccup. “I shouldn’t really be in here, if–”

She rounded on Hiccup, both hands curling into fists. “Ms. Haddock. I _know_ you are not supposed to be here, and that is precisely _why_ I need to speak to you. However, I must find Dr. Miyazaki, or my sister, first, and therefore you _will_ stay with me. Do you understand?” It took more effort than she was expecting for her voice not to shake, fear building to panic in her chest even if there was probably no call for it.

Hiccup swallowed. “Yes, Ms. Winters,” she said.

Elsa took a deep breath, trying to make herself feel as if it were spreading through every inch of her, pushing out the panic. It was not particularly successful, but it did help a little. Hiccup fell into step behind her as she continued down the corridor, offered her pass for access to the final three doors at the end – level ten, and this time Hiccup was probably justified in looking nervous as Elsa motioned for her to follow through as well.

There were only three doors on the end of the corridor, all of them meant for Dr. Miyazaki and her alone. Only Elsa, Hiro Hamada who controlled their IT systems, and the eldest of the Westergaard sons Caleb, had the level ten access otherwise required. All the same, Elsa knew that Dr. Miyazaki was far more her equal than her employee, and she rapped at the door to the laboratory there.

It was not uncommon for Dr. Miyazaki to listen to music as she worked, and indeed there was a crooning Spanish voice audible beyond the door. What _was_ uncommon, though, was the quick shout of “No!” in Dr. Miyazaki’s voice, the sound immediately cut off.

Elsa threw open the door, heart in her throat and Hiccup at her heels. Dr. Miyazaki was sitting at one of the desks, hair pulled back but without her usual safety goggles or gloves on her hands, a look of terror on her paled face. A man stood behind her, hugely tall and broad in the shoulders, glaring at the intruders.

“Honey Lemon,” Elsa began, knowing Dr. Miyazaki’s preferred nickname, but the woman shook her head with a whimper just audible above the music.

“Get out,” the man growled. He had a thick, dark beard and hard eyes. From the position of his right arm behind Honey Lemon and her stiff, frightened pose, Elsa realised with a feeling like ice down her back that he had a gun.

“Who are you?” said Elsa. Her phone felt heavy against her skin, but it would take time to reach for it. She could not even slide the scales off her ID card to reveal them to the tracking systems again.

“None of your business.”

“Elsa, just go,” Honey Lemon said. Her hands were flat on the glass surface in front of her, arms trembling with tension, but there was anger as well as fear in her expression.

Elsa tilted her chin. “I am Elsa Winters, director of this park. Explain yourself to me immediately.”

There was the crackle of a radio. The man grabbed at it, holstered on his hip, with his left hand; all that Elsa could take in, though, was the voice that issued from it.

“Alvin? Is there a problem? The door isn’t opening.”

“Hans…”

“Open the door!” the man that Hans had called Alvin barked. He grabbed the radio and held it up. “You could say so, Westergaard. Your Director’s just turned up.”

There was a weary sigh from the far end. “Oh, Elsa, I did try to keep you out of this.”

The next sound from the radio make her blood run cold. Anna’s voice rang out, as clear as day. _“Elsa! He’s try–”_ it was cut off with a squeak, then muffled thuds and a howl of pain and a man complaining that he had been bitten. The radio went silent for a few long seconds before buzzing back into life again.

“Alvin, get the door open from up there, or get one of their pass cards and get down here. Now.”

There was a click, audible even through the music, the sound of a gun being readied. “Open the door,” said Alvin, “or I’ll have to take one of those top-level pass cards of yours. And that could get messy.”

“You don’t _get it_ ,” said Honey Lemon, almost viciously. “It wasn’t what we expected. It’s too big. Too dangerous. If I open that door, it’s out of containment.”

“Don’t you worry about containment,” Alvin said. “They’ll handle it.”

“They _won’t be able–”_ Honey Lemon’s words were cut off as he raised the gun and placed it against the back of her head.

“Open it.”

Honey Lemon swallowed, hazel eyes locking on Elsa’s. “I’m sorry,” she said, so quietly that Elsa had to read her lips to make out the words, and laid her hand down on her tablet.

There was a green light, scanning along, and then a confirming beep. “Access granted,” said an electronic voice.

Then nothing. No secret doors, no change in sound. The room fell silent, and Elsa found herself taking several breaths, tasting the faintest bitter tang of chemicals on the air. She refused to ask Alvin what had happened, refused to bow to that level, but it was becoming increasingly tempting to ask Honey Lemon as the seconds ticked away.

The world crashed apart.

The entire building lurched, and Elsa screamed and grabbed at the doorway. Hiccup slammed into her, and Honey Lemon clutched at her desk and fell from her stool as Alvin was thrown bodily sideways. A _roar_ filled the air, above the sound of crashing glass and breaking concrete, and Elsa felt it reverberate down to her bones.

“I _told_ you,” Honey Lemon shouted, rounding on Alvin. “I told you that it wouldn’t be controlled!”

Elsa looked out through the shattered windows, and thought that the world had stopped. An enormous _snout_ , a head, the head of a dragon that was larger than anything she had ever imagined or any fossil that had ever been found, was protruding from the mountain. Three pairs of eyes blinked in a rippling motion as the huge head swung from side to side, then the dragon roared again, loud enough to make rocks fall from the mountain and for the whole building to vibrate beneath them.

Getting back to her feet, Honey Lemon vaulted over the table at which she had been working in a move that Elsa would never have pictured her making, and ran for the door. As reality dawned, Elsa turned to do the same, grabbing Hiccup by the arm and pulling her back out through the door. There was a crash behind them like a mountain being broken apart, and that could well have been what it was, a landslide a dozen times larger and louder than any landslide that Elsa had ever heard.

“What the hell is that thing?” said Hiccup. At least one of them had found their voice, Elsa supposed.

“Experiment four-lambda-two,” said Honey Lemon. They reached the door to the stairs, but the light in the lock had gone dead, and it did not respond to either of them. “Military… Westergaard said that it was top secret, that even you couldn’t–”

The building was rocked again, a crashing sound so loud that the world seemed to shake. Hiccup pushed past both of them and kicked the door with her prosthetic foot, sending it banging open in the warping frame. They ran down the stairs, in no particular order, as dust rained down around them and lights snapped out.

“Which Westergaard?” said Elsa.

“Hans.”

They hit the garage floor running, although Elsa was not even sure what they were running _for_ any more. Down here, the floor was less buckled, and she skidded to a halt with Honey Lemon doing the same beside her. Hiccup got a few paces further before stopping, left foot leaving a long scratch on the concrete.

“Hans had military experiments?” said Elsa. She still did not have the room in the head or the time on her hands to sort out even half of the implications.

Honey Lemon nodded, almost frantically. “Genetically-engineered dragons. Hybrids. Completely new species. But this one got out of control. It grew so fast that it ripped its skin apart. It killed three people. I was trying to get permission to have it put down, and instead–”

“Instead, he just let it out,” said Elsa.

The ground shook around them, and they both flinched from the ceiling as dust trickled down.

“I think it’s trying to destroy its pen,” said Honey Lemon. “Its cage.”

“It’s that smart?” said Elsa.

One look was all that Honey Lemon needed. Even Gronckles and Zipplebacks, which the keepers would jokingly say were the least intelligent of the dragons, would know enough to recognise a cage that held them, instead of a paddock where they could live.

“We need to get the Retainment Team out here.”

“They won’t have a chance,” said Honey Lemon. “It’s too _big_ , Elsa.”

“We need to evacuate the island, and we can’t do that in no time.” Elsa pulled out her phone, already hitting Marisol’s number. She needed to be on speakerphone in the room. But the garage was still a basement, and the call refused to connect. The urge to swear was so hard that she bit her tongue.

“And there’s – if it destroys this building, there’s others,” Honey Lemon continued. Elsa looked at her, eyes going wide with the horrified shadow of the dragon still cast over her. “Not like that one. But other experiments. Other dragons.” She glanced upwards. “I need to get into their wing and break the door locks. We _can’t_ have Alvin or Westergaard getting to them.”

“No, I’m not leaving you here with this thing–”

“No offence, Elsa,” said Honey Lemon. “This isn’t something where I’m listening to a director.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and bolted back up the stairs again, taking them two at a time. Elsa went to run after her, only to be grabbed by the arm. “Hey!”

“We gotta go,” said Hiccup.

“You – let go!” snapped Elsa.

Hiccup had a stronger grip than she had anticipated. She pulled Elsa over to her motorcycle, which stood not all that far away. “She’s got her plan. I’ve got mine. And _you_ need to get out of here and get in touch with your people to start the evacuation.” She grabbed her helmet, then tossed it on the floor. “Not the time. Get on.”

“Stop being an ass.”

“You stop being an ass!” Hiccup retorted. “Get on the damn bike and let’s get the hell out of here!”

There was another bang from above them, practically on cue. Elsa looked up, hesitated for a moment longer, then with a growl beneath her breath marched over and climbed onto the motorbike behind Hiccup. It rucked her skirt up well above her knees, but that was probably the least of her worries as the crashing and roaring continued above.

“Hold on,” Hiccup shouted, over the increasing noise. She hit the ignition; the bike barely purred to life, not even roaring. Electric, Elsa realised. “This isn’t going to be an easy ride.”

There was no point in any further hesitation, and she tucked her phone away again before wrapping her arms firmly around Hiccup. “Has anything been today?”


	5. Chapter 5

Hiccup drove like a lunatic.

This wasn’t really all that much of a surprise; Elsa had seen how she had driven during the Speed Stinger incident, and honestly she would not really have expected anything less from the woman. But it was one thing to _see_ that absurd driving from a distance, and quite another to be on the back of the motorbike in question, weaving between trees and crashing through low greenery, along paths that did not even exist.

Reaching for her phone again was out of the question, even if she could have made herself heard over the horrific roars of the giant dragon behind them. All that she could do was hold on, and finally beneath the whipping branches and stinging air she had to press her forehead to Hiccup’s shoulder, turning her face away.

Finally, they came to a halt, the roars of the dragon distant but still audible, and Elsa realised that her phone was already ringing. Her hands shook as she pulled it from her bra, and she stumbled off the bike as she answered the call.

“Marisol–” she began.

“Oh, thank God, Elsa,” Marisol blurted. There were alarms blaring behind her, and the sounds of shouting. “You need to get in here, nobody knows what to do without you.”

“Not an option. I can’t get to you. Put me on speaker.” She put a hand against a tree, vaguely hearing Marisol’s acknowledgement and then the clicking of wires and machinery as she was plugged into the system. Finally, she had the chance to look around them; she was fairly sure that they had arrived at an old storage unit, most of which had been put out of use years ago and should have been demolished. This one had been modified, a lean-to built on one side and a canopy attached to the front, under which stood a table with an waterproof sheet thrown over whatever was on it. An old jeep was standing on wooden blocks within the clearing, and honestly none of that surprised her in the slightest.

“Elsa, I need to explain something,” Hiccup said, leaning her motorcycle against another tree and stepping close. Elsa shook her head, waving her away as she heard the distinctive clunk which meant she was on loudspeaker. Putting her own phone on speaker in response, she held it in front of her mouth and took a deep breath.

“All right, everyone!” The noise noticeably dimmed, and she could picture them looking around in surprise. “This is Elsa Winters, and the alarms that you are hearing are not a drill. We need to proceed to a full evacuation at level alpha. Repeat, a full evacuation at level alpha.”

She drew a deep breath. It was mostly quiet at the far end of the phone now, but that was a good sign. It meant that there was no longer panic and hubbub.

“Begin full public evacuation, prioritising the north-east sectors. All keepers are to recall their dragons, get them into their pens, and take shelter in the bunkers provided in their sectors. Other staff should use the bunkers or the underground systems, whichever is more available. Authority is given for use of tranquilising guns and other non-lethal capture methods for dragons if necessary.

“The Retainment Team should report to the Restricted Laboratories immediately. Calhoun, I need you to be my eyes and ears for them – make sure that they see this footage and know what is loose there. Lethal force is authorised, and unofficially I would say that they will probably need it. They need to be aware that an _unknown human force_ may also be present. Hans Westergaard has bought in an outside force, possibly paramilitary,” she had to raise her voice as she heard noise starting up again, “and they are to be presumed hostile. Yes, that includes Mr. Westergaard himself.

“If there are any boats of visitors heading towards us, _turn them away_. I want full evacuation procedures brought into play. While visitors are waiting for evacuation, I want them in our sheltered buildings. If people have questions, we say that we have concerns about a potential weakness in our security for _one dragon_ , and are taking precautions. You know this; we’ve drilled it; there will be no panicking. Understood?”

Even through the phone, she could hear the mumbles of assent.

“I currently do not have computer access, but I will seek it out as soon as possible. Until then, you know what you are doing, and I will still be in phone contact. Any other questions?”

This time, the answer was broadly negative.

“Then get to it!” said Elsa. “I’ll be back in contact to check in shortly.”

As she ended the call, she felt her strength almost seeping out of her, the heat of adrenaline fading. She was still only wearing the blouse and skirt that she had been meaning to wear to meet Anna at the restaurant, a lifetime ago.

“Oh God,” she breathed. “Anna.”

Hiccup looked round sharply. “What?”

“Anna. I didn’t find her.” Somehow it had disappeared, and even though it had been a gun and then a dragon that had driven her sister from her mind Elsa felt the roil of guilt. “Oh, God. I need to…” she stopped before she called again. “No, I can’t ask Marisol. They need to be evacuating. Oh, God.”

“Okay, _that_ ,” said Hiccup, “that I might be able to help with. But first, I really need you to not freak out…”

Elsa looked up slowly, worried about what Hiccup could possibly think was worse than what had just happened, but Hiccup was looking genuinely concerned as she glanced behind Elsa.

“And slowly turn around.”

She _heard_ something behind her, a shifting sound of scales, and her mouth went dry. Probably even more slowly than Hiccup intended, she turned around, eyes falling on the creature of liquid shadow in front of her.

Any child in the world could recognise a dragon. But even she, the director of the park, did not know what dragon _this_ was. It was black, with only the faintest mottling to its skin, long and sinuous with four legs and two wings, and it was giving her a look that was chillingly intelligent. Its eyes were huge, green, and its mouth cracked open to reveal shining pink gums beneath.

Elsa’s mouth opened, but nothing came out and she closed it again. Her nails dug into the bark of the tree as she clung on to it. “Hiccup?” she finally managed, weakly.

“It’s okay,” said Hiccup, in the tone of voice people usually used to speak to animals. Oddly, Elsa was not all that offended, given the circumstances. “Bud, she’s with me,” she added, voice firmer.

Hiccup stepped up right behind Elsa, who was still frozen in place. The black dragon prowled a few steps closer, the large flaps around its head twitching and nostrils flaring as it sniffed her.

“I was _really_ hoping to actually say something before he turned up,” said Hiccup. Elsa realised that Hiccup must be talking to her; the dragon keepers also had a habit of using gendered pronouns for their dragons. The dragons, for their part, had never seemed to particularly care. “But, no, he turned up.” She dropped to a knee just in front of Elsa and, to Elsa’s astonishment, held out her hands. “Elsa, this is Toothless. Toothless, Elsa.”

The dragon rubbed against Hiccup’s hands like a cat, rumbling. Elsa felt her jaw dropped and stared as Hiccup ran her hands over the dragon’s cheeks, _petted_ him, then looked round sheepishly.

“I don’t know where to begin with my questions,” she said weakly.

Hiccup dropped to sit on the ground, putting an arm around the dragon’s neck. For his part, he went back to sniffing around Elsa’s legs and feet, with the occasional snort.

“I was fixing a car up at the Restricted Labs, five years ago,” Hiccup said. “Mechanics… we’re pretty much invisible, you know? So two scientists just carried on their conversation like I wasn’t there. Talked about an experiment that was ‘faulty’, how they were going to dispose of it.” She looked at Toothless, the way a parent looked at a child. “I didn’t realise what ‘it’ was until one of them said that the tail hadn’t developed properly.”

“You stole a dragon,” Elsa concluded, skipping a few steps ahead. Somehow, despite or perhaps because of knowing Hiccup largely through her more colourful exploits over the years, that made perfect sense.

Hiccup didn’t really have to say anything; her furtive glance to Elsa said it all. “There were two scientists sent to do it. Both of them thought that the other had dealt with it, I guess… I smuggled him out in my jacket. Bought him here. Bud, tail,” she added, with a click of her tongue.

The dragon squirmed free of her hold, turned, and flicked Hiccup on the back of the head as he drew his tail round and dropped it into her lap. Hiccup rolled her eyes. But she stretched open the dragon’s tail fin, to show that it was asymmetric, one side developed with a shape like the wing of a bat, the other bare skin.

“I guess he was one of the earlier experiments,” said Hiccup.

At any other time, Elsa would have been furious. Possibly terrified, as well, but definitely furious. Right now, though, it was as if she did not really have the strength for it, as if everything had been drained out of her. One of her mechanics had stolen a dragon – an impossibly old, impossibly powerful, fire-breathing reptile over which her company had the genetic rights – and now it was lying on the ground looking up with huge green eyes, tail dangling in a person’s lap.

“Why did you do it?” said Elsa. The second question, right on its heels: “And why didn’t you _tell_ anyone?”

“They were going to kill him! And they called it _disposing_ of him, like he was just…” Hiccup pressed her lips together to hold back whatever else she was thinking of saying, and shook her head. “I couldn’t let that happen. Especially when I realised he was a hatchling. And then… well, I figured that you knew.” She shrugged. “Didn’t think there would be anything going on on this island that you didn’t know about.”

“Yeah,” said Elsa quietly. “I thought that as well. Guess we were both wrong.”

Cautiously, she crouched down, keeping one hand on the tree to support herself as she did so. Or perhaps just for some reminder that this was all real, she was not sure. Finally, she dropped to her knees on the soggy leaf-litter, and the dragon – Toothless, that was what Hiccup had called him – lifted his head to regard her curiously. At least, that was what the cock of the head and the flicking of his plates – so large that they looked like ears – looked like. She could have been wrong.

She had often wondered what it was like, to touch a dragon. Only the keepers or the veterinarians handled them, and that was either in dire circumstances, when they were sedated, or both. Now Hiccup was stroking Toothless’s tail almost absentmindedly, not looking as she did so.

“How…” Elsa cleared her throat, and raised her hand a couple of inches before hitching it back again. “How do you do it?”

“Well, I spent several weeks feeding him flaked fish and sleeping out here with him,” said Hiccup dryly. “But just… be gentle. Keep your hand open, so he can see you don’t have anything in it.” Elsa went to extend her hand with the palm down, then tilted it up to show her palm instead. Probably less a literal take on Hiccup’s words, though, and more that a flat palm felt less as if she were offering the dragon a snack. “Yeah, that… that should do it…”

It was absurd. It was absolutely mad. And all the same, Elsa slowly extended her hand towards the dragon, who gave a little sound that she would have called, of all things, a _chirp_ , and craned his neck to sniff her hand before nudging his nose against it.

She let out her breath. She hadn’t realised how long she’d been holding it, enough that her cheeks had been growing hot and her chest tight. The dragon rumbled again, and this time she felt it against her palm, hot and slightly damp with his breath.

“You must be mad,” she said, still quietly. Although her eyes didn’t move from the dragon, Hiccup probably guessed they were meant for her, to judge by her snort of laughter. “ _I_ must be mad.”

“It might be about to get madder,” said Hiccup. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Before Elsa could say anything, Hiccup got to her feet and trotted into the storage unit, leaving the door open behind her and Elsa just kneeling in front of Toothless. Toothless looked over, with another slight cock of his head, then turned back to Elsa and parted his lips. It should have been frightening, from a dragon, and perhaps would have been were it not for both the way that it looked like a smile and the fact that the dragon did not even seem to have _teeth_.

Well, she supposed that would explain the name.

“Toothless, huh?” said Elsa. The dragons did not have official names, although she knew that the keepers tended to name them. It seemed like a very long time ago, and not just two days ago, that she had heard Heather calling one of the Razorwhips by name.

Toothless huffed, and butted his nose against her hand again.

She ran her hand gently over his snout, knowing enough to go with the scales rather than against them. They were warm, dry, and smooth. It was the smoothness that caught her most by surprise, his scales small and fine, flowing over each other as easily as grains of sand. His eyes were huge, forward-facing, and did not have the cold and ancient reptilian look that Elsa had come to expect from the times that she had come close to dragons. The one that knew that its ancestors had killed the things that had been your ancestors, and had an idea of how you would taste as well.

As her hand trembled, his tongue peeked out, forked, and delicately licked her palm. It could not have tasted pleasant after the day she was experiencing, but it was as comforting as a cat and far less rough. Even with the slimy streak of spit left behind. Elsa laughed softly, still feeling as if she were close to tears, and traced the dragon’s upper jaw as he watched, patiently, quietly.

Another roar from the distance shattered her thoughts, and her head snapped up again. Toothless sprang to his feet, head whipping round, and abruptly there were teeth shining white in his mouth. Hiccup burst out of the shed again, some sort of leather and carbon fibre contraption under her arm, and skidded to a halt beside them.

“It’s worse than it sounds, bud,” she said grimly. “Come on.”

“What is that?” said Elsa, kneeling up as Hiccup hunkered down and strapped the leather across Toothless’s back. It was dark brown, clearly visible against the shining black skin of the dragon, and stranger still seemed to have some sort of stirrups dangling from it. “It looks like some sort of _saddle_.”

“That’s because it is,” said Hiccup. Elsa gaped at her as she set about strapping it into place. “Toothless can’t fly with his tail as it is; it’s unbalanced, he can’t get airborne. I started off just trying to make him a new tailfin, and it ended up with this.”

“How…” she wasn’t even sure what question she wanted to ask first, her mind lost in a flurry of bewilderment.

“How long?” Hiccup glanced over her shoulder. There were two little braids in her scruffy hair, just behind her ear, that stuck out at an angle. “He was big enough to carry me in a little over a year. Before that I’d rigged up these sort of static things, and they were enough for him to get some exercise, but nothing like what he really needed. He made it pretty clear that he didn’t like the version I tried where _he_ did as much controlling as possible.”

Elsa went to push her hair off her face, but caught herself before she used the hand that Toothless was licked. The other one, if streaked with leaves, was probably better. She wiped it on her skirt, just another mark on the already grubby cream linen. “I meant how did you come up with the idea.”

Hiccup caught her eye for a moment, looking incredulous, then nodded down to her foot. “Prosthetics aren’t exactly weird around here. Hiro did me a solid on some of the microprocessors–”

“Hiro Hamada? From IT?”

“The very same. Microprocessors for my foot, I mean. Well, the ones for my foot first.” Hiccup had shuffled along Toothless’s body as she spoke, and was now strapping a _tail_ to him, or at least half of one, the replacement for the fin which she said he had always been missing. Unlike the carbon fibre and leather, it was bright – red, with a white helmeted skull on it. Elsa might have stared, as Hiccup cleared her throat and for the first time looked somewhat guilty. “Yes, it’s the Thunderdrum Keepers five-a-side football team symbol, I know. I do have _some_ family loyalty.”

She straightened up, and extended a hand to Elsa. Elsa thought to wipe the dragon spit on her skirt as well before accepting it and being pulled upright.

“Do you… want to borrow some pants?” said Hiccup, gesturing to what Elsa wore. Her long-sleeved teal shirt was holding up well, but the skirt had really seen better days. Or, indeed, better mornings.

It was really beyond the point in the day that she could start to worry about her role as director and how she was supposed to interact with a mechanic. She was more worried that she was several inches shorter than Hiccup, although she had always considered herself lucky to be around the average height for a woman. “If you have some here,” she said.

“Come on,” Hiccup said, nodding to the unit. “I’ve got some inside. Toothless, you just sit here a moment. Or scratch your armpit,” she added, as the dragon set about nuzzling under its own armpit like a grooming pet. “That’s an option.”

She caught Elsa’s eye and shrugged, as if to ask what she could possibly do; it was an expression that Elsa had seen often enough with reference to cats or dogs, but not so much with dragons. Waving for Elsa to follow, she headed back over to the unit, flicking back on the light and holding the door open for Elsa to follow.

Originally, these units had housed generators, radios, food supplies in case of the huge storms that had plagued the earlier years of the island and could still on occasion put a dint in plans. Some had also doubled as garages, although this one did not have a door large enough for that, and all of them would have held spare tires, a battery or two, and other equipment for mechanics. Some would even have held tranquilising guns and capture equipment. Nowadays, that was much more centralised, and Elsa had no clue what to expect as she followed Hiccup into the room.

It looked, for all the world, like a bedroom. Not like Elsa’s – tidy and ordered, with neat bookshelves and a neatly-made four-posted bed – or even like Anna’s with vases of flowers in the window and clothes and toys strewn about. Well, perhaps a little like Anna’s. There was a camping bed in one corner, with a sleeping bag and a couple of blankets, a desk littered with pieces of paper, metal bits and pieces, and part of a prosthetic foot, and a corkboard that hung from two Nadder spines that had been stabbed into the concrete wall. A partially-dismantled generator still stood at the back, and she would honestly not discount that as being Hiccup’s work either. The only large clear area of space was the back corner, shadowed, which had a circular black scorch-mark on the floor that could only, in the circumstances, be due to Toothless.

It did not shock her in the slightest, if she were honest, but that did not mean that it did not still feel like a _surprise_.

“Hang on,” said Hiccup, stepping over to a rucksack and rooting about inside it. “They might smell a bit musty… I stashed them out here a couple of years back, probably. Aha, cargo pants.” She straightened up, unrolling them with a flick of her wrists. They were creased and baggy, and Elsa could honestly say that she had never seen anything more inviting. She was pretty sure that she had ripped part of the seam in the back of her skirt when she had climbed into the motorbike. Elsa gestured for Hiccup to pass them over, and caught them from the air, years of school sports not having been for nothing. “And,” Hiccup continued, crouching down and fishing around under the bed, “a- _hah_. Boots.”

She drew out a pair of hiking boots, the left one looking shining new, and set them on the table next to Elsa. Back into the rucksack, and a pair of socks followed, but Hiccup kept searching.

“I mean, no offense,” said Hiccup, as she continued her rifling, “But those shoes you’re wearing are pretty ridiculous.”

Elsa looked down at her ballet flats; the sole was coming away from the toe of one of them, and they were both rubbing her ankles raw. “They’re my driving shoes,” she said defensively, retreating to the far side of the room and kicking them off. The concrete was cold and felt clammy beneath her feet. “Trying to drive in four-inch stilettos is not something I would wish on anyone.”

Hiccup gave a snort of laughter, then muttered something that sounded much more like a curse. She extracted a bundle of fabric, and unravelled it, only to reveal that it was only one sock that had become separated from its partner. “Seriously?” said Hiccup. “Urgh, come on, I keep you bastards in pairs out of habit…”

For many, many years, Elsa had valued her privacy. Even when she had been picking carefully through her savings, not knowing how far it would have to stretch, she had chosen a tiny studio apartment over having a roommate or even someone sharing her apartment. She was not sure how much of it was just her, and how much of it was due to being trans and the habits she had picked up from that, but it went so far back that in many ways it did not matter. Keeping her eyes on Hiccup’s back, she pulled on the cargo pants beneath her skirt, and did them up before even slipping the skirt off. They were a couple of inches too long, and would probably brush the floor, but there were worse.

All the time, Hiccup did not even look around, and Elsa wished that among everything else that had happened, she could get away from the pounding of her heart in her chest and the feeling of almost being _caught_ , a stupid old sensation that she still could not shake. Even less so when she was already nervous or stressed, which today went far beyond. She caught herself folding her skirt, even if there was no clear surface in the room on which she could satisfactorily place it, and her hands tightened as Hiccup finally turned to face her.

“Okay, it’s odd socks, I’m afraid,” she said. “I swear I put them in here in pairs. Probably should cut that out; it’s quicker to just grab any old sock and go on. Hey,” she nudged the boots over with her foot, “at least I’ve found those websites where you can buy single shoes now.”

Something about the mundaneness of it made Elsa smile, being grounded enough to talk about socks and shoes even in the midst of everything. There was a wooden stool in front of the desk, and she perched on it to kick off her muddy flats and start pulling on the two layers of socks that Hiccup had handed her. She had not even noticed how dirty her feet were, or now numb with cold they were starting to get, until she pulled socks on.

“So you can fly,” said Elsa. “On dragonback.” For a moment, she paused and shook her head, wondering how on earth her day had been so badly derailed.

Only, in some ways, she already knew. Hans Westergaard, and some military links, and dragons dreamed up in laboratories rather than even attempting to reconstruct evolution’s work. All of Honey Lemon’s work to improve the DNA recovery process, Hiro Hamada and his team improving the code that reconstructed the fragments, it had been meant to find the real dragons that had once soared through the skies.

And Hans Westergaard had wanted to make them into _weapons_.

She set about lacing up her boots with sharp gestures. “I _need_ to find Anna. Whatever you’re planning to do, I want… I would deeply appreciate it,” she said, letting her voice soften as she looked up to catch Hiccup’s eyes again. “If you would take me back.”

“It’s going to be dangerous in there,” Hiccup said.

She wasn’t sure whether it was something about the way that Hiccup was standing, the fact that she said _in_ , or just the fact that this was Hiccup Haddock, purveyor of bad ideas extraordinaire, that made Elsa pretty certain of her response as she finished doing up the second boot.

“That’s not stopping you from going, is it?”

“Well… no,” Hiccup admitted.

“Please,” said Elsa. “This isn’t Elsa Winters, your director. This is Elsa Arendelle… trying to find her little sister.”

Hiccup nodded, a small but undeniable movement.

“Now,” Elsa said, letting her voice become more deliberate. “Are you going to admit what your plan is?”

“Honestly, I don’t have that _much_ of one,” said Hiccup. “But I _am_ going to need you to tell your Berserkers not to shoot me.”

“Believe me, they’re not _my_ Berserkers.”

“Well, whoever’s they are.” Hiccup pulled on a pair of leather gloves, with an air of finality. “Because I know the gear they carry, and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to stand up to _that_ dragon. So I am going to get into the air, and Toothless and I are going to buy them some time.”


	6. Chapter 6

Elsa could only conclude that they were both mad. It was the only explanation she could think of for why she had fired off quick instructions to Calhoun that the Retainment Team were to be aware that there was a black dragon, the size of a Nadder, with a rider, _yes Calhoun I said a rider, someone on its back_ , and that they were not under any circumstances to be fired upon. Calhoun’s answer that she would pass along the message to Captain Dagur strongly suggested that there would be a slightly more colourful description by the time that it arrived, but Elsa did not have time to care. She quickly checked to make sure that the evacuation was rolling on, was glad to hear that it was, but almost swore when she heard that security cameras were picking up unknown vehicles and people in the vicinity of the Restricted Laboratories.

“Get Hiro Hamada on it,” she said. “Get him to close as many gates as he can. Lock them to higher access levels if he has to – I know that he can! Boost Dagur’s access, give him level ten for heaven’s sake, I don’t know where the Retainment team are going to need to go. And cut Hans’s Westergaard’s access completely,” she added, with only a _slight_ feeling of pleasure. “In case it’s his card they’re using.”

“Here,” said Hiccup. She handed over an earpiece, which Elsa immediately slipped into place, and followed it with a small bag. “It’s just… a satellite phone in case anything happens to yours – I mean, it’s the size of a brick and weighs about as much, but it’s also about as durable – some master keys that the mechanics have to get into areas _we_ need to get into, and a couple of hand-injectors of sedatives. I picked them up in case, but I’ve never needed them. There might be some dried anchovies in the bottom, I’m afraid. Toothless likes them, but they get into _everything_.”

“Thank you.”

Hiccup had retrieved a sort of full-face mask that looked an awful lot more like an archaeological find than a modern motorcycle helmet, but Elsa did not comment. Neither did she object when Hiccup slid into place on the saddle, gestured for Elsa to sit behind, and told her to hold on tight.

“I’d clip you to the safety strap,” she said, “but I stopped using that a while ago.” Her voice was oddly distorted by whatever her helmet was made of; it sounded as if it was at least partially metal. “Just hang on, and I’ll try not to do anything too exciting.”

After the motorcycle, she was not sure how much worse the dragon could be.

She was completely wrong.

Toothless was _fast_. Faster than any dragon Elsa had seen, and she knew that they had clocked one of the Razorwhips at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour. It was supposed to be part of their advertising next year, if the park now even _had_ a next year. It pushed the breath from her lungs, threatened to rip her arms from around Hiccup’s chest, even made her vision go grey around the edges as they pounded into the air.

She could _feel_ the muscles working beneath her, those huge shoulder and chest muscles which all dragons had in order to fly, feel the pounding of the wings at her back. She could feel, as well, Hiccup’s legs working as she manipulated the pedals that attached to the tailfin, drawing them into the air and turning them back towards the Restricted Laboratories. The air stung, it was hard to breathe, but she clung on and focused on Anna.

As they rose above the trees, the creature loomed through the thin rain like a second mountain. It was greyish-green, studded with red spines, with a tail like an Ankylosaur’s and a head like a helmet. As Elsa squinted through the rain, to her horror, it threw back its head and breathed fire into the sky, an enormous billow of smoky orange-red flame that pooled like clouds.

That was going to be a lot harder to hide, she could not help thinking. A lot harder to stop people from being frightened, both because she did not want people frightened and because fear would make an orderly evacuation a lot harder. People were used to Gronckles and Monstrous Nightmares and even Snaptrappers; thinking that any of them might be loose would not cause panic. With this creature, panic seemed a lot more justified.

“You’re sure about this?” Hiccup shouted over her shoulder, sound dulled by helmet and wind both. It had a full-face mask that left only her eyes visible. Instead of trying to reply aloud, Elsa nodded, and saw the flicker in Hiccup’s eyes that was part respect, part concern. “Okay then.”

She steered them down again, not quite as fast as the climb had been but still enough that Elsa had to cling on tighter. They landed at the base of the Restricted Laboratories, or at least what had _been_ the Restricted Laboratories; at least half of it had been shattered, ripped open as if it had been struck by a bomb. Broken concrete and steel spars jarred into the air, and here and there bunches of wires stuck out of the walls themselves.

Elsa felt as if the blood was draining from her body. Anna had been here. Anna had to still be here. No matter what else happened today, she was going to find her sister and get her out of this mess, whether that be by the underground tunnels, one of the vehicles in the garage, or on their own damn feet. Borrowed boots and all.

They landed with barely a jolt, and at another time, Elsa resolved, she would have to ask Hiccup just _how_ experienced she was at flying, and just how she had gained that experience. But for now, all that she had time to do was climb off, ungracefully, and catch Hiccup’s arm just for a moment.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything today.”

Hiccup nodded, hard to read behind the mask, and Elsa backed away quickly to let her take off again. The punch of air from Toothless’s wings – good grief, he had to be fifty feet across – hit her in the chest, but within seconds they were little more than a small silhouette against the dim grey sky, looking for all the world like a bird or bat, heading straight towards the enormous dragon that turned, with a roar, to meet them.

Absolutely mad. This was a long way beyond guidelines.

Her phone rang, and she picked up the call with a tap of the screen. _“Elsa?”_ said Marisol immediately.

“I’m here.” She could tell that she was not in speaker this time, but the faint sounds of activity beyond Marisol at least did not suggest panic. Elsa jogged towards the remaining doors of the facility – an emergency exit, but one that she, at least, would be able to get in through.

“Evacuation is moving on. We’ve got the first boat moving, and the second loading now. One cruise ship turned back towards the mainland.”

“Good. Any issues?” The door still answered to her card, although she had to yank it open. The lights were flickering inside, some of the walls warped or cracked, and there was no sign of anybody. Elsa headed in. “I’m sure the fire in the sky didn’t help.”

“We’ve blamed it on a couple of Monstrous Nightmares, said that it’s interacting unexpectedly with the clouds.”

“I knew I hired you for a reason.” Marisol laughed, though her voice was tight. “You got the time to pull up Anna’s ID card again?”

“Her number’s still in the system.”

“Patch it through to my phone. Access code Winters-nine-two-two-one-alpha-eight-charlie-lima.”

“One second… got it. It’ll have maybe a ten second delay, but it’ll get there.”

“Thanks, Marisol.”

“Elsa, I’m looking at your ID right now. Are you seriously in the rez labs?”

“You’ve got bigger problems than where I am, Marisol,” said Elsa, even as she had to climb over rubble that was partially blocking the corridor. She withdrew her phone, and her heart beat faster as she saw where Anna was. Within two hundred metres, in the deeper parts of the laboratories that extended under the wing of the mountain, cut straight into the rock. It had been intended to be to make use of the geothermal energy there, the deep rocks still hot from their volcanic past. Apparently, Hans and whoever he was with had used it for something more. “I need you focused on the evacuation efforts.”

“Most of the teams have already got their dragons into their dens. Snaptrappers and Razorwhips have got a couple of outliers, but they know what they’re doing.”

“Of course it’s the Razorwhips,” Elsa muttered to herself.

“Elsa, if I’m heading evacuation, then that means you as well. Get the hell out of there. The Retainment Team are coming in, and Calhoun’s told them to watch out for your sister.”

She could have left. Could have left Anna’s rescue to the Retainment Squad, Dagur and his driven, if admittedly somewhat manic, men and women. But after all this time, just when she was having hope of knowing her sister again, it was unthinkable. Elsa shook her head, then realised such an action was completely pointless over the phone. It had been a long time since she’d done that either.

“Negative. I’m pulling rank. Besides,” she had to squeeze through a partially-open doorway, the handle painful against her stomach, “Hans made this personal when he bought my sister into it.”

There was a pause, then Marisol sighed. “Okay. I’ll get everyone out. Just get out of there in one piece, okay?”

“Wasn’t planning anything otherwise.”

  
  
  


The building became less treacherous as she moved deeper into it, creaking staircases and doors that had to be shouldered open even a few inches giving way to working lighting and walls that were not cracked. All of the laboratories stood empty, and the lack of even computers or experiments underway put more tendrils of suspicion into her mind. Checking in with Marisol told her that every scientist except Dr. Miyazaki was already gone.

On one hand, that was good. No more evacuation in need of doing. On the other hand, it meant that anyone she found was likely to be with Hans and his mystery armed group. Or, more precisely, anyone who found _her_ would be.

She picked her way up another flight of stairs, the air feeling hot and breathless. That could just have been her, though. Catching the clang of footsteps on metal, Elsa dove into the first door that she could find, a small office cubicle littered with papers, and for lack of another hiding place slipped behind the door and tugged the wastepaper basket close enough that the door would catch it before her.

There had to be better places to hide. Behind a _door_ , for heaven’s sake. She pressed tight to the wall, kept her breath shallow and quiet, and listened to the steady beat of footsteps in the corridor outside. More than one person, she thought. There was no conversation, though, no voices to give her any clues, and all that she could do was wait with bated breath and sweat trickling down her back until the boots and voices passed and began to receded again. Even so, she did not come out from her hiding place immediately, but pulled out her phone, double-checked that it was on silent, and noted Anna’s location again.

Getting closer. Still getting closer.

She waited for the boots to sound as if they were going down a stairwell before squeezing out again and peering along the corridor. Still clear.

This was absolutely ridiculous, and the last place that she would have imagined her life leading. Then again, when she had been that frightened girl in a strange country, doing night shifts in building management, she could not have imagined ending up on an island full of dragons in the first place.

She realised that Dragon Island would have first opened in the same year that she left home. Strange, how she had never realised that before.

Keeping her steps as silent as she could in Hiccup’s mismatched boots, she continued down the corridors, until the sound of voices made her dart into another room. A laboratory, this time, but stripped bare, with wires poking out of the walls and ceiling to dangle precariously. This time, however, the voices grew no louder, and footsteps did not accompany them. Elsa steeled herself and exited the room again, before making her way more slowly down the corridor, checking in every room that she came across.

The laboratories had been stripped clean; the offices had done marginally better, with personal effects and a few sorry-looking plants left behind while computers and papers had been taken. In one room, she found a baseball bat on a stand, in pride of place on one of the shelves, and glanced at the door to confirm that this was, indeed, Dr. Jack Banning’s office. She remembered hiring him. Smart man, with steady hands and an almost uncanny ability to throw scrunched-up balls of paper into the wastepaper basket no matter where in the room it was placed. He always had laughed it off as being one of his few skills left over from his baseball-playing youth.

Elsa had not done so well in baseball or in rounders, but that had been more a matter of not wanting to than a case of not being able to make the bat connect with the ball. After a moment’s hesitation, she picked up the baseball bat and steadied it in her left hand, remembering the feel and the weight of it again. She weighed it against the sedatives that Hiccup had given her, but to be honest she felt a lot more confident about hitting someone’s elbow or knee with a baseball bat than she did about managing to control a dragon-sized sedative dose so that it didn’t kill a human being.

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. But if it came down to hitting someone with a baseball bat to help her sister get out, she knew that she wouldn’t hesitate for an instant.

Not feeling any better prepared, she nonetheless continued along the corridors, until she could hear snatches of the conversation ahead. She got out her phone for a moment more; Anna was only ten to twenty metres away now. So close.

She went to put the phone away, then paused and set it to record instead, disconnecting the earpiece and stuffing it into her bra on the other side. Possibilities; you didn’t get to Director without thinking through the implications of everything that could happen.

“…Dr. Miyazaki’s pass,” Hans said, from around the next corner. Elsa stopped, hand tightening on the baseball bat until her knuckles turned white, but stopped and sidled closer to the wall. He was ahead and to her left, in the largest room of the wing that cut into the mountainside. Only a few metres away. But he would not be alone. “Viggo, I want you to concentrate on keeping Dr. Hamada out of the systems. Aside from them, my brother is the only one with level ten access, and fortunately both he and his access chip are thousands of miles away.”

“I’m going to presume that you mean Dr. _Hiro_ Hamada from IT,” said another voice, male and desert-dry. “And not Dr. _Tadashi_ Hamada from your medical staff.” A pause, and an unimpressed snort. “I thought as much.”

“It was _your_ man Alvin who lost Miyazaki in the first place,” snarled a third voice. Male again, the vowels not so rounded as the others. “Or whatever fool nickname...”

“Honey Lemon, my dear brother,” said the second man.

“Honey Lemon,” the third echoed, scoffing.

“It was _my_ man,” Hans replied sharply, “who found Dr. Miyazaki and got access to the systems for you. And as I recall, Ryker, it was _you_ who declared that your handlers would be able to deal with any dragon, no matter the size.”

“That’s not a bloody dragon,” said the third man, probably the one Hans had called Ryker. “That’s a walking mountain, and it was your scientists who cooked it up.”

“Relax,” drawled the second man again. There was the sound of tapping keys as Elsa edged closer to the doorway to the laboratory. “Our second wave is incoming. They should be here in twenty minutes, no more. I’m sure that the ‘Retainment Team’, or as I believe they like to call themselves, the ‘Berserkers’;” he pronounced both terms with the delicacy of a Hyacinth Bucket trying to remove dog droppings from her lawn, “should be able to hold it off for at least that…” he trailed off. “What on _earth_ …”

Someone stomped across the room. “What the hell is that?” snapped Ryker. “One of the other dragons get loose?”

“That is not any of the dragons currently on show at the park,” said the second man quickly, “and neither is it one of the ones we were intending to pick up. However, it does bear a _striking_ resemblance to one of the experiments which was declared a failure some five years ago now.”

“There were several that failed,” said Hans. “The results were destroyed.”

“Yes, so your reports said. However, you cannot deny that it looks very much like the one which, I believe, your scientists nicknamed the _Night Fury_. The hatchling showed no dentition, no indication that it could breathe flame, none of the aggression required, and there was a deformity in the tail which would have rendered it unable to fly. Does that about sum things up?”

“That was about the sum of it,” Hans said.

“Hmm. Well, either your scientists were lying to you, Mr. Westergaard, or you have been lying to me.” The sound of a chair moving, scraping against the floor. “Because that is quite clearly your Night Fury, and not only is it _flying_ but it seems to be capable of keeping a person aloft as well.”

“What?”

More boots on the ground. Elsa checked her phone again; she could not hear Anna, and could not imagine that this conversation was taking place in front of her, but the phone still said that she was within five metres.

Unless…

Fear dripped, cold, down her spine. Unless the card she had been tracking had not been given to Anna at all.

She froze, suddenly torn about whether to flee or not, when there something cold pressed against the back of her neck.

“Now,” said Alvin, “I wouldn’t move, if I were you. Well, save for dropping that baseball bat. Westergaard! Grimborn!” he shouted, loudly enough for Elsa to wince. “Look who I found eavesdropping.”

The nudge of metal against her skin was more than enough of a point, and she dropped the bat to clatter uselessly on the ground. Her hands curled into fists at her side, but she refused to drop them or anything half so submissive as she walked forward and around the corner.

There were only three men in the room – Hans, a black-haired, bearded man with intense eyes working at a computer, and a tall, burly figure with a shaved head and a sub-machine gun slung across his body and a sturdy knife at his belt. All of them looked passingly surprised to see Elsa as she was walked around the corner, but it was the man at the computer who seemed to recover his composure first.

“Ah! And this must be Ms. Winters, about whom we have heard so much. I would apologise for the inconvenience, but…” he shrugged. By his voice, he was the second man, the one whose name she had not heard. “One does what one must.”

“ _What_ ,” Elsa bit out, “are you doing to my island?”

“Your island?” Hans laughed, a short, bitter bark. “Oh, no, Elsa. You see, this island and everything on it is owned and financed by my family, so this really isn’t _your_ island at all.”

“Not that your family know about this,” she shot back, “or it wouldn’t be happening at all. You wouldn’t need what I can only presume are mercenaries if this was the vision that your family had for the dragons.”

“You say mercenary,” said the unnamed man. “I prefer adventure capitalist. And no, I don’t have any interest in explaining the minutiae of our plan to you, as I have heard of your exceptional memory and dedication, and although you probably won’t be getting out of this alive I find it best not to take chances. Brother, if you would be so kind as to put Ms. Winters in with her sister,” he waved to the man with the shaven head; the process of elimination made him Ryker, “whilst Hans and I talk with Alvin. I presume that you have _completed_ your task this time?” he added, voice almost weary, and looking straight over Elsa’s head to the man holding the gun on her.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Alvin hold something up. “Doc herself got away, but this got dropped during our… disagreement.”

“We may not have long before she realises and asks Dr. Hamada to shut it down,” said Hans. “And I know that you’re good, Viggo, but I would maintain my concern that Dr. Hamada might be better.”

“I’m always concerned that someone might be better, Hans,” said Viggo. He smiled, but there was no warmth in it at all. His eyes were more cold than those of any of the reptiles Elsa had ever seen. “That’s how I stay sharp. Now,” he said, to Elsa again, “be a good young lady and head over to that door, please.”

Whether or not he had any clue as to her actual age did not really made, Elsa supposed. She knew she looked younger than she really was – her hair and wide blue eyes tended to see to that – but suspected as well that Viggo meant it more as condescension and faux-politeness than anything else.

“One question,” she said, holding up a finger for emphasis. Ryker rolled his eyes, while Viggo looked mildly amused and Hans did not bother hiding his smirk. “Just one – Westergaard,” she said, deliberately using his surname to keep the professionalism he had apparently dropped. “My sister. How is she involved in this?”

“Oh, Elsa.” Hans smiled, and somehow the fake caring was far worse than Viggo’s honest coldness. “When I found out _you_ were the elder of the Arendelle children, I _would_ have quite gladly courted you instead, but you were so very determined to keep our work meetings to work alone that it soon became apparent that I had no chance. Besides, you had forfeited your inheritance when your parents died. And so…” he spread his hands, and shrugged. “She’s a little younger than I would have liked, but that doesn’t matter, I suppose. You and she will be just as dead soon.”

“Why _us_?” said Elsa. She could see Viggo readying to say something, but she had not worked with Hans and his ego for this long without knowing both how to placate it and how to provoke it. “You said yourself that I’m just Director here, after all. It’s not like I actually _own_ anything.”

Hans scoffed. “Oh, it was never about _you_. Just that estate of yours, and those _delightful_ islands it has in international waters.”

“Westergaard, really,” said Viggo again, this time in the tone used to scold a wayward child. “I had just _said_ that we were not to be discussing plans.”

“It’s no problem,” Hans said. “Now that we have Dr. Miyazaki’s card,” he walked over to pluck it from Alvin’s outstretched hand, then drop it into Viggo’s hastily extended one, “then our little friend in there can deal with them both before we knock it out. I was told that it was due it’s fortnightly feed yesterday, but didn’t receive it. I’m sure it’s hungry.”

“Ryker, check her bag,” added Viggo, as Alvin nudged her with the barrel of the gun towards the door to which the men had been indicating at various times. “I’d hate to lock her in there with her ID card still in her wallet or on some lanyard in there.”

Elsa took off the bag and handed it over before one of the men could think about forcibly removing it from her, dangling it at arm’s length and daring the man named Ryker with her eyes. He stomped over, snatched it from her hand, yanked the zip open as if it had personally offended through him, and set about rifling through.

“The hell is this?” he said, drawing out the satellite phone. “A museum exhibit?”

“Delightfully old-school,” said Viggo, “but it’s probably best if we don’t burden Ms. Winters with it. He held out his hand for it, and immediately flipped it over to remove the batteries. “It’ll take more to destroy one of these, but that’s a start. Anything else?”

Ryker very carefully drew out the clear plastic case containing the two syringes of sedative. Those, Viggo did not move to take off him.

“Well, tut tut tut,” said Viggo. “And here was me thinking that carrying those without the appropriate licence was a _felony_ , Ms. Winters. We’d best relieve you of those as well. And those keys that I can hear,” he added, although Elsa had been quite sure that the keys had been zipped tightly enough into a side pocket that they would not make a sound. “Marvellous.”

Ryker tossed the bag back at Elsa; she caught it more by instinct than intent. It was not even hers, that was the foolish thing, but Hiccup had taken the time to put it together while she was giving orders down the phone and even with everything removed, it was a sign that two people on the damn island had tried to help her today.

“Now, then,” said Viggo. He put aside the satellite phone, and used Honey Lemon’s card – mercifully not blood-splattered, that was all that Elsa could think – to open the door. “There we are. Much simpler than hacking your system with the Hamada boy trying to stop me.”

Alvin shoved Elsa inside, and then the door was closed behind her. In a heartbeat, she took it in: a square white-walled room, with a dragon caged on one side of it, and on the other Anna taped to a chair with tape across her mouth. Anna’s eyes went wide when she saw Elsa, and she said something that was muffled by the tape; Elsa dropped the bag and run over, trying to peel the tape away carefully and still flinching when Anna gave a little grunt of pain.

“What are you _doing_ here?” said Anna.

“I came to find you – I’m so sorry,” Elsa replied. She could feel tears in her eyes, but tried to blink them away as she tried to pry away the tape from Anna’s wrists in turn. This time, though, the layers would not budge. “I’m so sorry, I should have realised something was happening and stopped it…”

“Well, I don’t think anything’s gone to plan.” Anna squirmed her wrist beneath the tape, wincing as it tugged on the bare skin of her wrists. “You really shouldn’t have come, though. They’re going to–”

“I don’t care what they’re planning,” Elsa half-snapped. “We’ll figure something out.”

There was an electronic beeping sound behind her, then the almost-silent shift of metal on metal. Anna’s face went pale as she looked over Elsa’s shoulder.

The dragon growled.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter talks more about Elsa's childhood experience of being trans*, and she sort of misgenders herself at one point. It makes sense in context, hopefully. But there's references to transphobia there.

“They initiated the countdown,” Anna said, little more than a whisper.

Elsa turned to look over her shoulder, just as the intercom system clicked into life above them. “ _Warning all personnel,_ ” it said, in perfectly cool, controlled tones. “ _A release countdown has been initiated in subject room three. Please leave subject room three if you have not already done so._ ”

Red numbers next to the dragon’s cage showed 60. Or at least, they did for an instant, before ticking straight down to 59.

“No, it’s quite all right, Viggo,” said Hans, voice muffled from outside the door. “I’ll keep an eye here. When it’s done, I’ll release the gas to knock it out. Terrible accident, if anyone ever does find out.”

Elsa bent, putting dignity aside, and used her teeth to make a nick in the edge of the tape. It gave her just enough leverage, and she started to release Anna’s right hand, every heartbeat feeling as if it was taken too much time.

“Elsa,” said Anna hurriedly. “If we’re going to die, please, just tell me why you left.”

“We’re not going to die,” Elsa said through gritted teeth. The end of the tape came away, only to reveal that it had been put on in two layers. A frustrated snarl escaped her, but she bent down to bite through the second layer as well, trying to stop her hands from shaking as she kept unravelling.

“Elsa, _please_ , just let me know why you left. I know you used to fight with Dad–”

“Because you were five years old, Anna,” she snapped. “You were _five years old_ and you should not have been dealing with that crap. Shouldn’t have heard me and Dad shouting at each other.” It felt strange to even say the word _Dad_ after so long avoiding it. “Shouldn’t have come home from school with a black eye from fighting because of me.”

“What? I didn’t–”

“ _Warning all personnel. A release countdown has been initiated in subject room three. Please leave subject room three if you have not already done so._ ”

Elsa finally got Anna’s right hand free, and stepped straight round to bend and bite through the outer layer of tape on the other side. “Undo it,” she said. Ankles were going to be harder; they were bound so tightly to the chair leg that Elsa was not sure she would be able to get her teeth to them even if she could crouched down to the floor. “You punched some boy named Duke in the face, Anna, and got in a fight.” She grabbed her bag from where she had dropped it at the sight of Anna, searching through for _anything_ that might have a sharp edge, but nothing presented itself. “Because _his_ big brother told him that your freak big brother wore dresses. Okay?

“It was bad enough that Dad and I had been having the same arguments for however many damn years.” She pulled the earpiece out of her bra, and tried to use it to lever between the tape and the chair leg, but could not even get any purchase. “Now it was affecting you as well. It was too much for Dad, and – and it was too much for me. Urgh!”

She threw the earpiece across the floor in anger, sending it skittering into the corner right over the cover of a drain. The room smelt like a butcher’s shop, and the sixty-second countdown was the same as they used when the other dragons needed to be fed. Presumably the ‘experiments’ had been fed in here, and that was exactly what Hans was planning to do again.

The dragon behind them pawed at the bars as the last five seconds were announced with another series of beeps. Elsa turned where she was kneeling, determined if nothing else to stay in front of Anna, as the lock clicked open and the dragon inside reached to push the metal bars that made up the door.

It _looked_ weird. Part of her felt bad for thinking it, but it was undeniable – black and yellow, with its wings and back legs normal but its forelimbs seeming to end in huge black pincers that snapped at the air. It had two large flaps on its head, like antenna, gleaming orange eyes, and a tail that looked like three strands in yellow, orange and black, wound tightly together.

But its appearance didn’t matter as it stepped down onto the cool-tiled floor, watching them with black predator’s eyes. Its nostrils flared, probably smelling the fear streaming off both of them, as it slowly stepped towards them. Its tail arced over its head, all three strands twitching, still tightly wound together.

Dragons were dangerous. That was their very _nature_. Not all of them were aggressive; some, like Gronckles, were docile enough for the public to meet with and pet them on special events. But Viggo had strongly suggested that these experiments had been bred… or more rightly, _designed_ … for aggression. And with the majority of the dragon breeds, food could not even be taken near them, especially when they were younger and more, as some of the keepers put it, flighty.

There were _rules_ about being around dragons, at least all of them other than the particularly tame Gronckles. Always know how much fire they had. Always keep glass or metal or forcefield between you and them.

And _never_ turn your back on the cage.

The rules were gone. There was no cage, no forcefield, and Elsa did not even know what this dragon was supposed to be called, let alone what it was capable of. The only person she had seen who did not follow the rules was Hiccup, with the creature that Viggo called a Night Fury and that Hiccup called Toothless.

Elsa did the only thing that she could think of. She scraped the bottom of her bag for the dried anchovies that Hiccup had warned her about, grabbed a handful, and held them out towards the dragon with her eyes averted.

There was silence. She felt the shifting air as the dragon sniffed her hand.

“What,” whispered Anna, the sound still deathly loud in the room, “are you _doing_?”

“Something I learnt from a friend,” Elsa replied.

Hot breath washed over her hand, and for a moment she thought she might faint, but then the dragon’s wet tongue dragged across her palm, picking up the anchovies along the way and getting her sleeve damp.

Elsa groped in the bag for more, and this time the response was more immediate, the dragon barely waiting until her hand was open before licking them up with a rumble that just might have been appreciative. No teeth, she realised, and found herself smiling as she finally dared to glance sideways at the dragon and hold out her hand, palm flat towards it.

Towards _them_.

The dragon’s head was on a level with hers, huge hooked beak sharp and perfectly positioned to take off her entire hand if they so wanted to. But instead they sniffed at Elsa’s hand, cocking their head curiously, then, so slowly that it seemed trancelike, rested their nose in Elsa’s hand.

“Oh my god,” she finally said, letting out her breath in a rush. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“What did you just do?” said Anna, sounding even more bewildered and breathless than before.

“Let me see if they can help.” She shifted to reveal Anna’s legs and ankles to the dragon, who looked over the chair and its half-bound occupant curiously, but with no sign of aggression. Elsa ran her finger down the tape that bound Anna’s legs, pressing her nail into it hard enough to leave a line but, naturally, not really doing much.

“Uh, Elsa…” Anna said, sounding deeply concerned.

Elsa hushed her, and repeated the action. The dragon stuck their nose in the bag, slurped after what were presumably the last few anchovies, then turned and watched Elsa drag her nail in a line for a third time. She was just starting to fear that it would not work when the dragon reached out with its pincer-like talons, very delicately pressed the tip of one to the top of the tape, and cut down in one elegant movement.

Anna stifled a yelp as her leg came free. Her pant leg had been cut in the process, but the line was gouged into the metal chair leg and not her skin. Elsa repeated the gesture on the other side, and the dragon obliged, slitting open the tape open easily and then stepping back, with a huff, as Elsa frantically ripped the tape off chair and pant leg both to drop it to the floor.

“How did you do that?” said Anna, grabbing Elsa’s forearms and still looking worriedly at the dragon. “ _What_ did you just even do?”

“I will explain in _full_ once we get out of here,” Elsa promised. “For now, let’s just say that I learnt a few things as well today. Come on.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” Anna nodded to the locked door. “Those things are card-locked!”

Elsa slipped her hands free, just to unbutton her left sleeve and push it up to reveal the ID card still in its sheath, Razorwhip scales on either side of it. She fished out the uppermost scale, and immediately a beeping started above them.

_“Warning. ID card detected within subject room three. Warning.”_

That part, Elsa had not been expecting, and it either completely blew their element of surprise or improved it. She didn’t have time to wonder which, lunging forward to sweep her card over the detector beside the door and haul it open.

Hans whirled, confusion in his eyes and gun in his hand, and looked at her. His eyes flickered straight down to her bare arm and back again, and he growled, sounding disgusted. “I should have known. Quite literally up your sleeve. But,” he raised the gun and levelled it at her.

Elsa stepped to the side, and let the dragon behind her come into view. Eyes going wide, Hans stumbled back, but the dragon was already growling.

“I’d say that either they don’t like you, or they don’t like guns, Hans,” said Elsa. “Now, why don’t you throw the gun out of the room, so we can find out?”

Instead, Hans fired. The bullet ricocheted off the dragon’s armoured head, pinging back out to bury itself in the ceiling above Hans’s head. Even Hans looked shocked, inasmuch as he had time to look shocked before the dragon pounced on him.

Elsa hadn’t actually been intending that, but she realised too late that a dragon should probably be treated like a loaded gun – only pointed at something that you were willing to shoot. She shouted, not even words but incoherent noise, but the dragon’s tail had already unwound, one of the three strands snapping forwards and hitting Hans right in the cheek.

Hans had enough time to raise his hand most of the way to his cheek before his legs went out from under him and he hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Bolting into the room, Elsa kicked the gun away from his slack hand before falling to her knees beside him and immediately feeling for a pulse. It was still going strong in his neck, his breathing steady, and she sat back on her heels with a sigh of actual relief. She was still hoping to get through this day _without_ casualties, let alone ones that she caused herself.

“Is he still alive?” said Anna.

“Yes. Looks like the dragon knocked him out.” She looked over at the dragon, who was regarding Hans with a remarkably disgruntled expression for something that did not have lips or eyebrows with which to make itself understood. Then they looked up at Elsa again, cocked their head, and grunted. “Thank you for that.”

“Good,” Anna said. She walked over and wasted no time in planting one hearty kick in Hans’s groin. His body twitched with the force of the blow, but otherwise did not move. Elsa winced. “And I hope you felt that, you bastard.”

“I was just going to order him into the room himself,” said Elsa. “Without the dragon, of course.”

“We can still drag him in.”

“True. But then,” Elsa let her tone grow more sober, “we’ve still got more intruders to deal with. Viggo’s the one that I’m worried about – he seemed to be the brains of the operation. Plus however many men they bought along. But if we take out the leaders of the operation, that should put a stop to it, if we can get there before that second wave that Viggo was talking about.”

“Okay,” said Anna, confidently. “Lock up Hans, then go after the others. Um…” her voice became less certain. “You wouldn’t have any ideas about that, would you?”

Elsa eyed the door behind which they had been locked, and particularly the large _three_ written above it. There were four such doors along the back wall. “I think it’s time to make a few more friends,” she said.

 

 

 

 

 

Even the Restricted Section had a small kitchen for the use of staff, and Elsa search through the fridge and cupboards while Anna dragged Hans into the room, taped his hands and feet for good measure, and then went through what little paperwork had been left behind and looked through the mobile phone she had taken from his pocket. She had also relieved him of a radio, which she clipped to her belt, and Honey Lemon’s pass which she put on the same lanyard as her own, retrieved from a nearby desk.

“Apparently that one is called a _Triple Stryke_ ,” she said as Elsa returned to the room and put a tray on the table. “Because the three tails do different…” her voice trailed off. “What the hell have you got there?”

“One packet of smoked salmon, three cans of tuna, and sixteen rashers of uncooked bacon,” Elsa replied promptly. “Otherwise known as what meat I could find in the kitchen. I would have bought the carrots as well, but I turned my back on them for thirty seconds and they disappeared,” she added, pointing at the dragon with her thumb.

“Carrots?”

“Quite a few of the dragons like them. Thunderdrums go nuts for them, apparently. I asked for an explanation after the fifth tonne of carrots or so that the keepers asked for.” Even if she did not have official training in the care of the dragons, she supposed, she had probably picked up more than a little bit over the years. “Definitely the Triple Stryke?”

Anna turned the folder to show her the unmistakable picture of the black and yellow dragon on the front. “There’s a bunch of DNA breakdown and experiment notes that I don’t understand, but long story short: _Triple Stryke_. Not even a year old, either. Oh, and she’s female – they all are. Founder units,” added Anna, the words turned vicious on her tongue.

Well, the age probably explained some of the puppyishness. Elsa winced, torn between feeling worse for a dragon that was barely more than a _baby_ and being treated like a weapon, and being relieved that it had not been spending years on years in whatever cage had been built for it. She doubted it would be as good as a paddock.

“Anyway, I’ve got some pretty good contenders for the other doors,” Anna added. “Six folders in all – you do the maths. Big dragon outside,” she dropped a folder onto the table between them, “has the charming name of the _Red Death_. From what I did understand, something went wrong in how big it grew, and Dr. Miyazaki has been trying to get it put down almost since the beginning. Seven years old.”

“They were doing this for seven years…” Elsa breathed. It was almost as long as she had been working here. Or, if that was when the Red Death had been hatched, perhaps it _had_ been going as long as she had been working here. Easier to keep a new Director out of the loop than try to build under the nose of an existing one, perhaps.

“ _Changewing_.” Another folder, this one with a poor-quality security video image on the front. “Spits acid, changes colour. Like a dragon, an ant and a cuttlefish had a threeway.”

“Anna!”

“Wow, even I’m regretting that mental image.” She shook her head, but ignored Elsa’s protestation. “Suspect number three is called a _Skrill_ , which is at least slightly more imaginative.” This dragon looked a little bit like Toothless, but was more purple- than grey-black and had only two legs to Toothless’s four. “Produces and redirects electricity.

“Number four;” another folder, “is a _Fireworm Queen_ , and either there’s something wrong in their measurements of they’ve taken an eight-inch dragon and made it fifty feet long.”

“Oh, god.”

“And number five,” the last folder hit the table, the dragon on this one ghostly blue, “is called a Flightmare, glows in the dark, and can breathe a paralysing gas.”

“Hans must have been mad.”

“And coming from someone who just made friends with something whose tails can kill you, knock you out, or fill you with burning pain, that’s saying something.”

“I’ll stay away from the tail end,” said Elsa. She rolled up both of her sleeves to above the elbow, and picked up the can opener. “Are you ready to do this?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Anna stood up again, holding up the lanyard with Honey Lemon’s card in it as well. “You?”

She probably should have been terrified, but instead Elsa felt strangely liberated. The same feeling as when she had first set foot on a foreign shore, all those years ago. “Definitely.”

 

 

 

 

 

Elsa might have bothered with stealth on the way in to the building, but there wasn’t really much point on her way out again. None of the other dragons had seemed quite as keen as the Triple Stryke to befriend her, but they were behaving well enough by the time that food had been offered. Anna looked more than a little daunted by the huge reptiles, and truth be told on any other day Elsa would have been scrambling away and calling for the Retainment Team.

This was definitely not any other day.

“Okay,” she said to Anna, as they made their way down one of the hallways. “The nearest exit should be down this corridor and second right. It should only take a few minutes to–”

There was an almighty crash from behind and to their right, accompanied by a dragon’s snarl. Elsa looked round in time to see the tail of the Fireworm Queen disappearing out of a hole in what had been a complete wall not all that long ago.

“Or we could go where she wants to go,” Anna suggested.

“Or that.”

The Changewing crawled along the ceiling; the Skrill snapped at the Triple Stryke, which immediately bounded back to try to hide behind Elsa. It was oddly endearing, if also plain odd. The Flightmare, with a hiss of faintly glowing breath that they were all careful to avoid, whipped its way through the room and out after the others. Elsa went first, to make sure that there was nothing dangerous left on the rubble in the wake of any of them, then helped Anna out through the wall and onto the uneven mountainside.

“This is so weird,” Anna muttered. To say it was an understatement would _itself_ be an understatement.

There was a human yell, a short burst of gunfire, and the Changewing lunged into a clump of bushes with a snarl. Metal crunched; this time it was less a yell and more a scream that followed.

“No!” Elsa shouted. Without even thinking, she bolted into the bushes after the dragon, only for her feet to go out from beneath her. She fell to her hands and knees in a stony gully, scraping her palms, but managed to skid to a halt and look up.

The Changewing, half-invisible against the rocky ground with only the scales on her head and part of her neck still red, was crouched over two strangers wearing camouflaged paramilitary gear. There was one gun beneath her foot, the claws having punched straight through the metal, and the other one buckled and twisted in her jaws. As she snarled, viscous green liquid dripped from her jaws, spattering on the ground and hissing on the metal.

“No,” said Elsa again, more firmly, holding out one palm flat to the Changewing. From the corner of her eye, she saw the men looking at her like she was insane, or possibly like she wasn’t even real. She understood the impulse. She pushed to a standing position, still keeping her hand out and her eyes on the Changewings, as the bushes were parted more carefully above her and Anna jumped down.

The Triple Stryke poked its head through the bushes after Anna, looked straight at the two men, and _growled_.

“Oh, fuck me,” said one of the men.

“Nope,” said Anna cheerfully. She held up two rolls of duct tape. “Not today, boys. I’m thinking more of bondage.”


	8. Chapter 8

They left the two men duct-taped both up and to each other, and continued on their way down the slope. On almost the far side of the mountain, the bulk of the Red Death was still visible, roaring her anger at the sky as Hiccup and Toothless danced and dodged just beyond the reach of her enormous jaws. Bright purple-white light flashed in the sky, the air cracked, and Elsa’s heart seemed to skip in her chest; that _had_ to be Toothless’s fire.

Hiccup must have been working to lead the huge dragon away from the laboratories. All the same, the Red Death’s tail thumped against the slope, and the earth shook beneath Elsa’s feet. It sounded like two mountains colliding, like tectonic forces sped up a millionfold.

“That thing just seems bigger and bigger,” said Anna.

“We need to be able to focus on it,” Elsa said. Gunfire was rattling further down the slope. She pulled out her phone, her retrieved earpiece back in place and called Hiro Hamada.

 _“Ms. Winters. Sorry about the radio silence!”_ There were various beeping and clacking sounds behind him, and Elsa was fairly sure she could hear the flight of his keys over the keyboard. _“I’ve got Captain Oswaldson to level ten, but I’m trying to get through the security systems. Some bastard – uh, somebody’s blocking me_.”

She could almost hear him wincing. Despite being a computer genius, Hiro’s attitude seemed to almost come and go depending on who he was talking to. Elsa had walked in on him frankly shittalking his older brother, only to fall into the mortified silence of a boy when he realised that she was in the room as well. It didn’t have anything to do with her position either, she had soon realised; it was more the fact that she was old enough to be his mother. In other situations, sweet, but not really what she needed right now.

“Captain Oswaldson is what I need,” she replied, ignoring his slip. “Does he have his comms device on?”

_“Two seconds… yes, he’s plugged in.”_

It was good to know that she had authorised those new kits for something. “Hiro, I need you to patch me through.”

At first, she had tried calling him Dr. Hamada, but he had alternately protested that _Dr. Hamada_ was his brother and just plain not recognised it when she used it. She had given up, and swapped to Hiro long ago.

 _“Working on it…”_ Hiro drew out the words. _“Just a seeeee- and you’re through.”_

There was a definite click, and then the staccato of gunfire at the bottom of the slope was doubled in Elsa’s head. She winced at the rattle of it, like a pain inside her own skull. “Captain Dagur!” she said. Only when Anna looked askance did she realise that it might have been somewhat of a shout. “Can you hear me?”

 _“What the – Ms. Winters?”_ Dagur sounded incredulous. There was a pause, and then the sound became more muffled. _“What is it?”_

“I’m trusting you got my message about the rider,” said Elsa, not bothering with more extended introductions.

Dagur laughed, an unhinged bark of a sound that Elsa had honestly never heard before. Given the extreme circumstances, though, she could rather understand the almost hysterical edge to it. _“Rather hard to miss.”_

“Good. What’s your situation?”

_“Found those intruders you were talking about. They’re firing live rounds.”_

“Are you–”

_“Rubber bullets. Found ‘em in the armoury.”_

Well, she supposed she would give them that, at least.

_“They’ve got us pinned down. We’re holding our own, but we can’t get any closer to that thing.”_

“I don’t want you closer,” said Elsa. “Concentrate on those men. Capture them, if you can – if you can’t get close, don’t endanger your men. There are two leaders left, I think – one tall, shaven-headed, big moustache. The other’s more your height, with a widow’s peak and bags under his eyes. Ryker and Viggo. They were working with Westergaard.”

 _“Noted. We’ll take ‘em. Savage!”_ Dagur bellowed abruptly, making Elsa wince. _“Left, left! Move, move, move!”_

She waited to make sure that nothing further was forthcoming. “And I can confirm that the big dragon – the Red Death – is the only non-friendly dragon in the vicinity.”

 _“Are you suggesting there are_ friendly _dragons about?”_

The Triple Stryke chose this moment to make a loud purring noise alongside Elsa’s ear. Dagur started to say something, but she pushed onwards. “Yes there are, Captain. They’re with me, and they’re on your side. I need you to tell your men not to fire on them either.”

There was a second’s astonished silence before Dagur seemed able to reply. _“Heard and understood.”_

“Good. I’m heading down towards you. Don’t worry about defending me, just make sure your men don’t shoot. Have you had any sign of Dr. Miyazaki?”

_“Safe and sound in one of our vehicles.”_

Even better. Elsa let out a deep breath. “Good. I need to speak to her.”

_“I’ll give her a phone. Anything else, Ms. Winters?”_

“Not right now, Captain.”

_“Understood. Over and out.”_

She rolled her eyes at the last words Captain Dagur used before cutting off, but at least there were worse things to be doing. The unsteady ground slipped and crunched beneath their feet; Elsa’s borrowed boots handled it fine, but Anna slipped, arms pinwheeling, and Elsa moved to catch her just as to see the movement ahead. The glint of a gun in the light. Her eyes went wide, and she had just enough time to see the flash of a gun being fired before darkness engulfed her.

Then she blinked, and heard the ricochet of bullets as she recognised the outstretched wing of the Triple Stryke. There was a hiss, then silence, and as the wing was retracted Elsa saw the Flightmare baring its teeth at another cluster of three men in the same camo. They still had guns in their hands, but they seemed _fixed_ , artificially still, eyes moving wildly but breathing steady.

“Paralysing gas,” said Anna helpfully, as Elsa stared.

“Oh. Yes. How long did that last, again?”

“I didn’t understand that bit of the folder.” Anna offered her a roll of duct tape. “Let’s not stick around to find out.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

There was something surreal to duct-taping three soldiers, especially ones whose eyes were still moving and who had faint growling sounds but no actual words coming from their lips. Anna at least solved one of those problems by slapping tape over their mouths, but that muffled the sound more than actually stopping it altogether. They gathered up all of the weapons in the area, put them in a pile, and with relatively few hand gestures persuaded the Changewing to spit acid all over them and leave them a spitting, melting pile.

As Anna told the men exactly what would happen to them should they try to get themselves loose before someone came back for them, Elsa’s phone rang again, and she quickly answered. “Honey Lemon?”

_“Elsa? Oh my god, you’re alive!”_

“I could say the same,” Elsa replied. “Are you okay?”

_“More like pissed off! Those pendejos took my card, and when they started waving guns around I barely got out of there!”_

“Don’t worry, we’re dealing with them bit by bit. The big dragon, the Red Death.”

_“I’m so sorry, Elsa, I had to–”_

“Don’t,” said Elsa. Even she was not sure whether she meant for Honey Lemon not to apologise at all, or for her to wait until the worst of this madness had stopped. “How can we stop it?”

_“I’ve got enough Carfentanil in the labs to put it down, but it’s in the safe, still inside.”_

“Get a couple of the Retainment Crew. Get back in there, and get it.”

_“But how can we get close enough to–”_

“Don’t worry about that part.” She was still working on it, eyes watching the distant, flitting shape of Hiccup taking up the Red Death’s attention. “I’ll see to that. Just get the drugs and get back here. This has gone on far too long.”

Carfentanil. She did not remember filing any permits or getting the permission for Carfentanil to be bought out to the island, but she supposed that if Hans had been doing secret gene splicing experiments then the import of restricted narcotics really should have have surprised her. Elsa ran her head across her forehead and turned to find Anna waiting nervously beside her.

“You… have a plan, right?” said Anna.

About fifty per cent of one, by Elsa’s calculations, but it was a start. She nodded. “And first, I need Hiccup back here. So, Triple Stryke;” she turned to the dragon in question, as a small part of her wondered whether it knew that was its name, whether it could really be counted as a name at all. “Let’s see if we can get her attention.”

 

 

 

 

 

“What the fuck,” said Hiccup, pushing up the facemask of her helmet but not even dismounting, “are those?”

“Changewing, Flightmare, Skrill, Fireworm Queen, and Triple Stryke,” said Elsa, pointing to each of them in turn. Hiccup was looking utterly flabbergasted, mouth hanging open, and it might not have looked quite so incongruous were she not currently sitting in a saddle on the back of a dragon herself. “More experiments. Thank you for the dried anchovies; they helped.”

“You taught her that hand thing?” Anna said, pointing at Elsa. Hiccup only looked more confused.

“Yes, she did,” Elsa supplied. “Hiccup – Anna, my sister.”

“You found her. That’s good.”

“Honey Lemon says that she has enough Carfentanil to take that thing down, but we need to get close enough to inject it.”

Hiccup shook her head. “The hide’s like armour. He’s not fast, but he’s…”

“She,” said Elsa, automatically. Hiccup frowned. “All of these were,” she added, with a wave to the dragons around her. “They were intended as ‘founder units’.”

From the look of dark anger that flashed in Hiccup’s eyes, she knew exactly what that meant as well. But then she shook her head, almost visibly pushing it aside. “Toothless is male. Trust me.” Even in the situation, she managed an edge of wry humour. “I’m all too aware. Maybe that was just something else that went wrong in his ‘design’.”

Given everything else that Viggo had listed, Elsa would not be the least bit surprised. Even with the Red Death still roaring in the background, scanning the sky in the opposite direction from them and presumably trying to work out where Hiccup and Toothless had vanished to, part of her wanted to laugh at the absurdity of their conversation, correcting pronouns and worrying about the sex of dragons.

“I can imagine,” Elsa said.

“In any case, _she’s_ heavily armoured. They could probably do an injection through the gums or something, but that doesn’t–”

“Then we need to knock her down,” Elsa said bluntly. She nodded to the other dragons. “I’m pretty sure they’ll follow you. Can their firepower help?”

“What can they do?” said Hiccup.

“Acid,” put in Anna, pointing at the Changewing. “Paralysing gas, lightning, normal fire but also venom from the Fireworm Queen, and fire and three venoms from the Triple Stryke. The files are pretty nuts,” she concluded, pointing with her thumb to the satchel slung over one shoulder. It mostly contained rolls and rolls of duct tape, but the files and everything that Hiccup had given Elsa had made their way in there as well.

Hiccup blinked a couple of times, eyes scanning the dragons again, then slowly nodded. “Okay,” she said. It still sounded a little overwhelmed, but Elsa was not going to mention that. “Six dragons. Well, she’s got six eyes. Let’s start with that, then.”

 

 

 

 

 

There was only so much, Elsa realised abruptly, that she could do. As Hiccup took off, the other dragons following her, two members of the Retainment Team finally caught up with Elsa and Anna and accompanied them to the safety of one of their armoured vehicles. All that she could do was watch through binoculars as the strange parade of unique dragons cut through the air – all save the Fireworm Queen, who was apparently more comfortable on the ground but could still keep up with them as she whipped over the land like a flash of sunlight.

“So, who _is_ she?” said Anna.

“Is this really the time?”

Anna punched her in the shoulder, albeit lightly. “We’re stuck in a car watching _her_ do the heroics. Might as well ask.”

“That is Hiccup Haddock. Technically speaking, she’s one of the mechanics here, working with Gobber – _please_ don’t ask about their names, I learnt not to a long time ago,” she added quickly, not looking from her binoculars to check whether Anna was looking incredulous but willing to bet that she was. “She tried to make it as a keeper three times before accepting that mechanics was probably going to better for you.”

“Tried?”

“There were incidents,” said Elsa, and did not elaborate further. Those had all been before her time, although it probably said a lot that Elinor Dunbroch, the previous Director, had considered it necessary to warn Elsa about Hiccup’s _incidents_. “It didn’t work out. We might have passed each other on the road, but I didn’t meet her properly until a couple of days ago when she got my car out of the mud. Then I found her again in the Restricted Laboratories, while I was looking for you.”

She caught her breath as the Red Death turned, roaring so loudly that the vehicle itself seemed to shake, but all of the dragons around it flitted out of the way. The clouds seemed to be quite literally darkening as she watched, a small area of deepening grey right above the huge dragon, and then lightning flashed and the sharp crack of thunder followed.

“Is that the Skrill?” said Elsa.

She felt Anna shrug, shoulder-to-shoulder with her as they watched. “The file said something about disrupting local electrical fields, so I’m guessing… yes.”

The Fireworm Queen appeared seemingly from nowhere and scuttled up the Red Death’s leg, as the other dragons darted in and out, so fast it was hard to keep track of any of them.

“When did you find out about the dragon?” said Anna.

Elsa laughed self-deprecatingly. “That would be today as well. When the Red Death came out, we had to flee the labs, and she took me back to meet Toothless. Any other day that probably would have resulted in a law suit for stealing Park property, but given the circumstances…”

“Any day that a mechanic can steal a dragon and get away with it must be a weird one,” Anna said, and but for the tension in her chest Elsa might have laughed.

“They must be readying…” she said, as the Fireworm Queen threaded round the huge crest of the Red Death to reach the middle of her forehead. The words dried up on her tongue, and she held her breath as the dragons formed a rough semi-circle around the Red Death’s head and began to fire.

Orange and yellow fire flashed, and Elsa had to tear her eyes away from the binoculars with the brightness of it all. She looked up without them to see the flash of lightning, followed by the bright white-purple flash that she had seen from Toothless – and, quite suddenly, the air seemed to explode.

A shockwave of light, like a ball of lightning, flashed out from the point where Toothless’s fire and the Skrill’s lightning came together. All of the dragons were knocked tumbling back through the air, and the Red Death staggered and _fell_.

The weirdest part was that she did not scream. It had to mean – Elsa could only hope that it had to mean – that the shock had been instant, enough to render her unconscious. Heart in her mouth, Elsa grabbed Anna’s hand without thinking, and squeezed tightly as the Red Death swayed and fell like a landslide against the slope of the mountain.

The impact was like an earthquake. The vehicle jolted beneath them, clouds of dust rolling through the air and the rocks ahead of them faulting and shearing with the force. Anna screamed, a sound she quickly swallowed back, but Elsa’s throat was too tight to scream as she waited for the dust to thin and the huge form to be visible again.

It was still. She was still, lying on the mountainside like another hill, and as Elsa watched the enormous side rose in a breath.

“They did it,” Anna said.

The words snapped into place in Elsa’s brain, and she grabbed for both the door and her phone at the same time. As she threw open the door and jumped out, her phone was already ringing, and within a few paces Honey Lemon had picked up.

 _“I’m guessing that noise was it?”_ she said. She sounded out of breath, and Elsa could hear the sound of running steps.

“Yes, she’s down,” Elsa replied. “You’ve got what you need?”

_“Enough to let her go.”_

“Good. Hiccup suggested the mouth to inject. Will that work?”

 _“Should do_.”

“We’ll meet you at her head, then. See you there.”

There was no gunfire now. She went to start walking, then reconsidered and climbed back into the vehicle. Anna, who had been about to exit, looked at her in bewilderment. There were emergency starter buttons beneath the steering column, and Elsa fished around for it, hoping that the almighty blow of the Red Death falling had not completely ruined it.

To her relief, it sputtered into life, and she straightened up. “Seatbelt,” she said to Anna, reaching for her own. Anna laughed, tight and disbelieving, but did indeed scrabble for her own seatbelt.

“Is this it?” said Anna. “We just go and… inject her?”

“Even a dragon like that deserves to be put down as humanely as we can,” said Elsa. The larger dragons were longer-lived, and with human help it was possible for them to survive injuries that would presumably have killed them or left them to starve in the wild, but occasionally there were still ones that had to be put down. It was more common among the smaller and more numerous Terrible Terrors and Night Terrors. “Usually we don’t use Carfentanil but… it’s probably the only thing powerful enough for a dragon that size.” She managed to manoeuvre the car out of the hollows its wheels had formed in the ground, the mud just thick enough to let her do so. “We need to check that Hiccup’s okay, as well.”

The car bumped and jostled over the ground, but Elsa gritted her teeth and resolutely did not mutter anything about the heavy hiking boots being much less suited to driving than her flats. If Dagur and his men could manage to drive these things, then so could she.

“Are we stealing this car?” said Anna.

“Not if I’m the one taking it.”

They bucked over what felt like another large rock, and Anna grabbed the dashboard. Suspension had clearly not been a priority on this vehicle. Just as Elsa was hoping to get the car evened out and onto flatter ground, though, a figure bounded out from behind a cluster of rocks and she had to slam into an emergency stop to avoid completely running them over. Considering the vehicle they were in was not far from a tank, it would have ended particularly badly.

“Dagur?” Elsa looked at him in astonishment. He had a gun in one hand, mercifully pointed to the ground, and a huge grin on his face as he jogged round to the side of the vehicle. Not seeing a way to open the window, Elsa cracked open the door and he stuck his head in.

“Ms. Winters! We’re pretty sure that we’ve got them all accounted for. Found the ones that you mentioned – they tried to pass themselves off as normal soldiers. Wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t given us the description.”

“Good,” she said crisply. “Any injuries?”

“Some.” For a moment, his grin faded. “But nothing life-threatening. We’ve got them immediate care.”

“Well done.”

Dagur nodded to the car. “Where are you headed to? The main road is back–”

“I need to get to the Red Death,” Elsa said. When Dagur frowned, she caught herself. “The large dragon. There should be someone there.” Hiccup had not been carrying a phone or communication device, so far as Elsa knew.”

“I should come with you,” said Dagur immediately. “In case something happens.”

Elsa almost refused him, but she _was_ still the Park Director. And it seemed that the Park still existed, despite everything that had happened. “Let your Second-in-Command know,” she said. “I don’t want them compromised by losing you.” She nodded to the park of the vehicle. “Hop in.”

Dagur jogged out of her sight, and she pulled the door closed again, before taking a deep breath and pushing back her hair. It was damp with sweat and gritty with dirt, and she grimaced. Anna’s hand came to rest on her arm, more warm and welcome than Elsa could ever have thought she would deserve, and she looked round with a weak smile to see her younger sister’s eyes alight with pride.

“You _did it_ ,” Anna said. “You stopped… whatever Hans was going to do.”

“Yeah,” said Elsa softly. It didn’t feel as if it had quite sunk in yet. She rubbed Anna’s hand, smiling, then jumped when the door behind Anna swung open and Dagur climbed up.

“Budge over, budge over,” he said, trying to slide onto the seat beside Anna. She scrambled to undo her seatbelt and shift sideways into the centre of the bench, as Dagur closed the door behind him again. “There we go. Can’t leave you unprotected, can we?”

He beamed at them both, showing far too many teeth.

Elsa blinked, then gave up. “Make sure your seatbelt’s on,” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to be the smoothest of rides to get there.”

 

 

 

 

 

They found the Triple Stryke first, limping slightly and holding one of its wings not quite closed. Elsa stopped the car, only a couple of hundred metres from the head and front legs of the Red Death, and jumped down without even bothering to close the door behind her. The Triple Stryke’s head popped up at the sight of the car, and she hurried over to rub her head against Elsa’s stomach with a sound that was almost a whimper.

“What the–” said Dagur, climbing out of the car as well.

“It’s okay,” Anna said, as Elsa stroked the Triple Stryke’s head uncertainly. She certainly wasn’t sure what to do with an _injured_ dragon. “She’s with us. I mean, Hans tried to get her to eat us, but that didn’t work out. I guess anchovy tastes better than human.”

Elsa risked a look round, to see Dagur looking absolutely bewildered and, apparently, struck speechless. “This is the Triple Stryke,” she said. “She’s one of the dragons I mentioned… clandestine experiments.” Elsa shook her head. “Just don’t do anything that might look aggressive.”

She did not point out that Dagur himself looked aggressive, and hoped that dragons would not be quite that discerning when it came to human clothing and body language.

“Hiccup!” Anna cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, really putting her lungs behind it. She took a deep breath before turning slightly and trying again. “ _Hiccup!_ ”

“I’m over here!” The response was muffled by the huge wind-like rush as the Red Death exhaled. Elsa could smell the fish and meat on its breath, and narrowly managed not to gag. She started in the rough direction of the voice, squinting through the churned-up dust until she saw Hiccup waving her arms.

“Come on,” Elsa said. She touched the Triple Stryke’s head gently, one more time, and hoped that she would understand that it was permission to stay still if moving around hurt too much. They could get vehicles out here to carry the dragons to the vets, or they could bring the vets to the dragons. There were options, now that neither the Red Death nor Hans were imminent dangers.

Being Park Director did not leave as much time as she would like to go to the gym, but she still went often enough. Elsa broke into a jog towards Hiccup, trusting that Toothless would be with her. The irregular crunch of ground behind her meant that both Anna and Dagur were following, but she concentrated on covering the distance to Hiccup as quickly as possible.

The woman was no longer wearing her helmet, her hair slicked down with sweat and blood dripping down the left side of her face. As she stopped waving, she cupped her right arm across her ribs, bowing her head.

“Hiccup!” Elsa reached for some last reserve, pushed a little faster, even as her lungs began to burn.

Hiccup looked up again as they came closer. “Toothless… and the lightning one…” she flapped her hand vaguely. “When their strikes met, everything went…” she shook her head.

“Yeah, I don’t think there are words either,” said Elsa. Only as she drew truly close did she realise that the shadowed ground beside Hiccup was Toothless, breathing heavily and looking up with huge green eyes. “How’s Toothless?”

“We all got knocked about. But I think all of the dragons are capable of walking.”

Elsa put her hands on Hiccup’s arms; Hiccup looked up, surprise in her eyes, and Elsa gave her a faltering smile. “Honey Lemon’s on her way. She’ll… let the Red Death go.”

Hiccup just nodded. She looked over Elsa’s shoulder, and Elsa stepped away again as Dagur joined them, still looking bewildered, with Anna close behind.

“You bought _Dagur_?” Hiccup said. She sounded remarkably unimpressed.

“We nearly ran him over.”

Hiccup snorted. “Should have done.”

Elsa rolled her eyes. “He’s here in case. Where are the other dragons?”

“The… Changewing?” Hiccup waited just long enough for Elsa to nod. “Is around somewhere. The huge Fireworm is up by the Red Death’s head, the glowing one is… around, somewhere, the one with the scorpion tails is coming up now behind you, and the lightning one…” she frowned. “Actually, I haven’t seen the lightning one.”

True enough, the Triple Stryke was flying towards them, though the sweeps of her wings looked pained. Elsa ran back to meet her as she landed again, and wished that she had more dried anchovy to offer. As it was, she just made a gentle, hushing sound, and stroked the dragon’s head.

“Hiccup?” Dagur sounded mostly astonished, but a little bit patronising as well. He was looking Hiccup up and down in undisguised bewilderment. “What are _you_ doing out here?”

“Good to see you doing your job too, Dagur.”

“I don’t see anything that needs _fixing_ out here.”

“Hiccup’s the _dragon rider_ that Elsa told you about,” said Anna archly. Dagur did a double-take in her direction. “She just saved you and your Berserkers from that dragon.”

Dagur started to laugh, whooping away, then trailed off as he realised that nobody was joining him. “You’re… you’re serious?” He looked at Elsa as if she would suddenly give him some other explanation. “ _Hiccup_ took that thing down?”

“How soon did you say that Honey Lemon was getting here?” snapped Hiccup. Given Dagur’s complete disbelief, it was probably understandable that she was growing more irritable, especially as she had kept one arm wrapped around her ribs. With her other hand, she did her best to wipe the blood off her face.

“Dagur, please establish a perimeter,” said Elsa. “And shout back if you find any of the other dragons. No weapons. Not even tranquilisers.” Dagur opened his mouth as if to argue, but Elsa looked at him sternly and it seemed to sink in that despite the strangeness of the situation, Elsa was still in charge. He nodded and set off, boots crunching in the gravel.

Hiccup made another attempt to wipe blood off her forehead.

Grimacing, Elsa stepped forwards. “I am _so sorry_. About Dagur. And this.” She wiped away some of the blood as well, wiping it off on her pant leg before realising that they were Hiccup’s borrowed pants anyway. “I don’t even have any tissues with me.”

“Oh, hang on.” Anna reached down into her bra and produced a crumpled half-packet of tissues, handing them over to let Hiccup at least start mopping up the blood.

“Thanks. Scalp wounds always look worse than they are,” said Hiccup.

Elsa smiled faintly. “Sounds like you have experience there.”

“Well, you’ve heard of my many and myriad run-ins with dragons.” She winced as she dabbed at the blood again, and Elsa stepped in to wipe it away as best she could. “Probably the ones with Dagur and his men, as well.”

“There was a file,” Elsa admitted. There was the rumble of a motorbike behind them, and she looked round to see one of the Retainment Team on a black motorbike that was definitely not one of the Park’s main fleet, a black-helmeted figure that was most likely Honey Lemon on the bike behind them. “There we go,” she said softly.

It felt like something of an anti-climax, in the end, as the motorbike drew up alongside them and Honey Lemon climbed off the back. She pulled off the helmet to show mussed hair and pink cheeks, thanked the Retainment Team rider probably without even realising that she was speaking Spanish, and ran straight over to them. Tomago, who Elsa recognised as the rider of the bike, gave them something that passed for a salute.

 Honey Lemon looked over the Red Death in amazement. “How…”

“We’ll explain later,” said Elsa. Her eyes were firmly on the metal suitcase in Honey Lemon’s hand. “Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Elsa took a deep breath. “Let’s get this finished.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I started the fic over a year ago, I finished it recently enough to have seen to the end of RTTE season three, and to have some serious Dagur feels. Hence his part of this chapter.
> 
> This chapter contains more discussion about Elsa's experience of being trans, and references transphobia perhaps more heavily. It's a calmer and less panicked conversation, though, so both of them are more careful about what they say.

The Red Death’s heartbeat was so huge that they could feel it through the ground itself. Honey Lemon wore two pairs of gloves to even handle the case, and it took several injections into the huge pink gums before all of the Carfentanil was used. Honey Lemon admitted that she had fought and wrangled to get that much of the drug, in the hope that she would be allowed to use it to put the Red Death out of its misery. Nobody had expected her to get so big, and there had been no plan for how to feed her properly, or even somewhere to house her beyond one of the caves in the mountain. It would have been hot and crushing and unstimulating, and Elsa felt even more sick than she had before.

When Dagur did not return, Hiccup stomped off in search of him muttering poorly-veiled threats, and Elsa hurried off after her. They left the Triple Stryke and Toothless sniffing at each other, in the sudden silence without the Red Death’s heartbeat or rushing breaths.

“We’ve got Hans recorded talking about what happened,” said Elsa. “He’ll pay for this.”

“That doesn’t undo however long she,” Hiccup waved at the Red Death, “had to suffer like that. Or the other dragons.”

The clouds above them were no longer so dark or threatening, but it began to spit with rain again. Elsa wrapped her arms around herself. “The other dragons, we can handle. Even if they’re legal evidence at first, there’s nowhere else in the world that could be expected to hold them. They’ll stay here. I’ll see to it.”

“Good.”

They continued over a low ridge, like a ripple in the mountainside. Dagur was crouched at the foot of it, apparently peering into a low cave.

“I will never understand that deranged man,” Hiccup muttered.

“He and his ‘Berserkers’ did just see off a literal paramilitary,” Elsa pointed out. Hiccup pulled a face, the effect made somewhat worse by the faint streaks of blood still on her skin. “Come on, let’s get him back. He can sit in the _back_ of the car this time,” she added, almost under her breath. For that, Hiccup gave her a curious glance, but she just cupped one hand around her mouth. “Dagur! We’re good to go back!”

He flapped a hand at them almost frantically, without turning his eyes away from the cave. Elsa and Hiccup exchanged a glance and sped up their pace down the slope, almost skidding on the steeper lower part. The cave was not that large, perhaps three feet high and six wide, and inky black inside.

“It’s okay,” Dagur was saying, coaxing. “You can come out now.”

The whites of eyes glittered in the darkness. Dagur made a clicking sound with his tongue, wiggling his fingers, and slowly the nose of the Skrill appeared from the shadows of the cave.

“ _There_ we go. Oh, you are just _glorious_ ,” Dagur said. His hand fell still, and slowly curved upwards as the Skrill approached, apparently without even needing to be shown. “What’s this one?”

Hiccup was still frowning. Elsa managed to gather herself enough to answer. “That one was the Skrill. It was the one causing the lightning.”

“ _That’s_ it,” said Dagur, as the Skrill continue to slowly exude out of the darkness. “Come to Dagur, baby Skrilly…”

“I’ve seen people get like this over hatchlings,” muttered Hiccup, “but not the adults…”

Elsa swatted her shoulder, light enough that it would not jar her ribs. “I think they’re having a moment,” she said.

Hiccup looked round, still uncertain, then tried to suppress her smile as she spotted that Elsa was teasing. She was absolutely going to be remembering this moment; Captain Dagur liked to talk about his martial arts practice, his competence with weapons, and not all that much else. The idea of him babytalking a dragon was going to be able to lighten her mood for quite some time, she suspected.

“They can ride in the back of the car together, then,” Hiccup suggested. “I’ll probably get Kristoff to come and give me a lift.”

“Kristoff?” It took her a moment to summon up the appropriate mental image. “Bjorgman, from the food management team? Has a dog that’s half Newfoundland and half bear?”

Even Kristoff had looked embarrassed when said dog had tried to put its paws on Elsa’s shoulders and lick her face. He had hauled the beast back to his truck and stumbled through the rest of the discussion about how the latest food cooling systems were doing, while Elsa tried to pretend there was not dog slobber on her fresh black slacks.

Only after she identified the person did she spot the rest of the implications. “Wait, did he _know_?”

Hiccup smiled weakly. “Yeah, he… kind of stumbled across us one time. Promised not to tell as long I didn’t drag him further into it.”

“And let me guess – you managed to drag him further into it.”

“He’s been helping me skim off the food that Toothless needs,” said Hiccup. Elsa sighed. Any other day, she really would have been furious about this. “In return, I did a lot of work on his truck for him, off-the-record. I did let him believe that this was a secret project I was _supposed_ to be taking part in, though.”

“I know Bjorgman,” said Elsa. “There’s no way that he believed that.”

“I think that we both accepted it as a sort of plausible deniability.”

Elsa shook her head. “We’re going to need several vans to get all of the dragons back anyway. But if you want to get ahead of the curve,” she fished her phone out of her bra again, wiped off the unfortunate sheen of sweat clinging to it, and handed it over, “here. Give him a call.”

“Thanks.”

 

 

 

 

 

It took a lot of vehicles, and a lot of persuading the veterinarians that they would only need to sedate the dragons and not completely knock them out before handling their injuries. Elsa got back in touch with Marisol, confirming that while an evacuation was still needed, people could be allowed to return to their hotel rooms and collect their things before leaving altogether. For those who had already left, their things would need to be packed up and sent after them.

“I think we’re going to be closed for the foreseeable future,” said Elsa, feeling tiredness creeping in her spine. “It’s not an emergency evacuation any more, put people’s vacations are over as of today. All paddocks closed, all rides closed. So it’s still going to be in everyone’s best interest to get people off as soon as possible.”

Over five thousand people had already been evacuated, but there were nearly thrice that still on the island before even addressing the staff and dragons. The danger had passed, which meant that things would need to return to as normal as they could for the dragons.

“I’ll get on it,” Marisol reassured her. “You deal with that end.”

The Retainment Team were equipped with handcuffs, just in case they needed to deal with a member of staff or one of the public who needed to be escorted away from somewhere. As far as Elsa was aware, those cuffs had not needed using in the last eight years, but while the rest of the intruders had merely been duct taped up or were kneeling with their hands on their heads, Ryker and Viggo were actually handcuffed.

Somebody had found a tablet, and Hiro beamed out from it. _“Presenting Ryker and Viggo Grimborn, and yes, so far as I can find, those really are their real names. I’m only finding a few breadcrumbs linking them to Westergaard, but trust me, if they’re on our systems then I’ll find them. More worryingly…”_ he tapped at his keyboard, and drew something up on the screen. “ _I’m finding the name Bludvist around them_.”

Viggo’s face did not flicker, but the anger that flashed in Ryker’s eyes made it more than clear enough that Hiro was correct. Elsa felt her head spin, and for a split second she thought that she might actually faint before gritting her teeth and blinking away the almost painful wooziness. “Don’t push too much, Hiro. But thanks for the warning. How’s the second wave going?”

She only asked because she was fairly sure of the answer. Hiro grinned, leaning back in his chair and linking his hands behind his head. “ _Already been picked up by our_ actual _military friends. I’ve got scans running for anything else that might be incoming, though._ ”

“Keep me updated,” she said, and turned back to face Viggo fully. Compared to his scowling brother, his expression was impassive. If anything, he looked vaguely impressed at what they had managed. Behind them, one of the trucks carrying the dragons drew up, and Hiccup climbed down out of the back. Toothless climbed down behind her, eyeing up the two men angrily. “It’s over, Mr. Grimborn,” she said. “Time to decide how much you want to blame on Mr. Westergaard, I would imagine.”

“Well, it seems that we both faced some unexpected factors today,” he said, with a cold half-smile.

Before Elsa could respond, she was aware of something blue in her peripheral vision, and turned just in time to see the Flightmare slinking close as well. Viggo’s eyes went wide at the sight of her, a worrying awe on his face, but before he could say anything the Flightmare spat a tight ball of gas across the faces of both of the men. Their skin took on a glazed, fixed look, and the Flightmare snorted at the pair of them before turning and walking away.

Well, she supposed that was one way to deal with them for the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

There were no injuries among visitors, by some miracle. Heather Osland had a burnt hand from diving in to calm down a panicking Razorwhip, and one of the Snaptrapper keepers had been bitten on the calf, but those were both injuries that the Park had long since been able to deal with. More troubling were the bullet-wounds among some of the Retainment Team, but Dagur had been right and even they were not life-threatening. Stabilised, there was relatively little danger facing them.

For the first few days, everything was chaotic, between the evacuation and the arrests and the number of lawyers that were rapidly getting involved with what had happened. No fewer than three of the older Westergaard brothers turned up, and Elsa had to handle all of them despite the fact that they barely seemed to be able to be in the same room without blaming each other for everything that had happened.

More than once, Elsa seriously considered taking the Triple Stryke into the room with her, to see if that would make them behave. But it would probably have been cruel to the dragon.

The Thorston twins fell in love with the Fireworm Queen at first sight, and she seemed quite content to settle into their enclosure. Both the Triple Stryke and Toothless, despite Hiccup’s half-hearted protests, ended up with the Night Terrors not least because they were small and docile enough for Hiccup to regularly enter the paddock. Even without asking, Elsa knew full well that Hiccup would be doing so. She asked the opinions of all of the team heads about whether their dragons would be liable to accept one of a different species into their enclosures, and ended up with the Flightmare in with the Razorwhips, where they mostly ignored each other, and the Skrill in with the Gronckles who regarded her with definite but gentle curiosity. The Changewing was the one that proved all but impossible to place, hissing and snarling at just about any other dragon who came nearby, and eventually in desperation Elsa had them open up sector fourteen, despite its complete lack of anything other than the actual fences, and put the Changewing in there.

As a visitor, Anna should technically have evacuated, but she insisted on staying with Elsa and letting her vent in the evenings as everything played out. Elsa feared it would be awkward, but somehow it was not; perhaps almost getting killed together had that effect. At the very least, they had plenty to talk about, in between Anna getting back in touch with _her_ lawyer to get her will changed back to take Hans out of it again.

“Could I…” she paused, hand over her phone, to look at Elsa with sudden vulnerability in her eyes. “Could I leave everything to you again? After you refused the inheritance from father, they advised that I didn’t try to write you in…”

Elsa, with her hair loose and wrapped in her biggest, fluffiest dressing gown after another day of dealing with squabbling Westergaards and bewildered lawyers, simply stood and stared for a few long seconds. She wasn’t sure whether it was a lack of remaining brainpower by that time in the evening, or simply that Anna was asking her something so huge in such a casual manner.

“Yes?” she said. She didn’t mean for it to come out as such a question, but could not stop it, and knew that she was looking at Anna somewhat helplessly.

Anna hesitated, bit her lip, then turned back to her phone for a moment. “Look, I’m gonna have to get back for you. Just… get it changed to its pre-Hans state for now. Yeah. Thanks, Gerda.”

She put the phone down, looked around awkwardly, and sat at one end of the sofa. The angle at which she sat made it quite clear what she was hoping for, and Elsa carefully sat opposite her, folding her hands in her lap.

“Sorry,” Anna said, in a rush. “I probably should have thought of that before they asked me who they wanted my beneficiary to actually _be_.”

“It’s okay.” Elsa smiled. “You just caught me off-guard. I mean… I didn’t expect to be in Dad’s will after all that time. When the lawyers tracked me down, it was something of a shock.”

“Was that how you found out?” said Anna. Elsa could only nod. “I’m sorry. I mean, it still wasn’t the best way to find out, hearing that there had been a plane crash and then waiting to see if there were survivors…” she grimaced. “That’s not helping. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It wasn’t you. And… I don’t think there would have been a best way to find out.” Elsa hesitated, then reached out and took hold of Anna’s hand. Even spending their evenings in the same apartment, they had been careful to keep distance between them. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come back. I just… I couldn’t face it.”

“Too many things that hadn’t been said?”

Elsa nodded.

“Yeah. I had a few of them as well. And I know that the will didn’t have your proper name on it. I don’t know if Dad tried to find it out or not.”

If the lawyers had been able to find her, to inform her of her father’s death, then it must have been possible. Elsa had her suspicions that her father had not wanted to know the name that she chose for herself, and that was in some ways the hardest thing of all to have left unsaid. The matter of whether he had ever accepted her for who she was, even in the end.

For a moment, she considered asking Anna, but could not bring herself to. “Well, when the lawyers came to speak to me, they called me Elsa Winters. At least.”

“Where did you get the Winters part?” said Anna. “I remember the Elsa, but…”

Elsa laughed softly. “I totally panicked, and used the surname of my favourite teacher from school,” she replied. “I’d spent so long thinking about the name Elsa…”

Of course, she had hoped that she would have been able to keep the name Arendelle. It had not worked out like that.

“Did I first call you that, when we were playing or having tea parties or whatever?” Anna’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember. “Or did you?”

“I did,” Elsa admitted. “You said that I needed a princess name if we were going to be having a princess tea party.”

“That was it.” Anna squeezed Elsa’s hand, nodding to herself with a slow-spreading smile.

But Elsa shook her head. “I shouldn’t have told you.” She went to draw her hand away, but Anna held on. “You were a kid, you didn’t even know what I was saying when I said I was actually a girl.”

“I was four,” Anna replied. “It didn’t actually seem that weird. I thought you were just, like, a secret princess out of one of the fairy stories or something. Only instead of people thinking you were a peasant girl…” she looked over again. “They thought you were a boy.”

“You were the first person that I told.” Elsa felt tears starting in her eyes, and tried to blink them back, looking up towards the ceiling. “I didn’t even think you’d remember it the next day. I just had to tell someone.”

Another squeeze of her hand. “You were, what, sixteen? I’ve been sixteen. You were a kid. Although less of a dumb one than I was.”

At least that was enough to make Elsa smile again. She could still remember Anna, three, declaring excitedly that she would love to have a big sister instead of a big brother. It had been harder to explain to Anna that she couldn’t tell anyone than it had been to say that she was a girl in the first place.

“Elsa,” Anna continued, voice becoming more serious. Blinking one more time, and hoping that would be enough to keep the tears back, Elsa looked round to meet her sister’s eyes. “I don’t…. remember a lot from back then. I mean, obviously, I was just a kid. But I do remember going to preschool and being sad that I was expected to say that I had a big brother, because I didn’t. But I had an _amazing_ big sister.”

It was too much, and the tears started trickling down Elsa’s cheeks. Before she could even finish trying to wipe them away, however, Anna folded her into a hug, squeezed her tightly, and Elsa found herself laughing and crying both at once, just grateful beyond words to finally have her baby sister there once again.

 

 

 

 

 

“If Toothless has a tracker,” she said to Hiccup, “we can let him out of the paddock. Legally, his position as evidence is not _quite_ so central as the other dragons, but we still need to know where he is.”

“Can’t you just give _me_ the tracker? Toothless is always with me.”

Elsa rolled her eyes. They were sitting on a couple of foldable camping chairs outside one of the caves in the Night Terrors’ paddock. Toothless and the Triple Stryke were splashing about in the shallow stream, chasing each other up and down the pebbles. She had not been in the least bit surprised to find that Hiccup had bought a tent and set up camp, but the chairs had been a nice touch.

“That’s not how it works. You can get one as _well_ , if you want.”

“I’m good.”

Anna, on the third of the chairs, was making friends with one of the Night Terrors by feeding it pieces of the ham sandwiches that were supposed to make up her lunch. The dragon had already realised that sitting on their back legs would earn more pieces of ham, and was accordingly batting at the air like a small dog.

“I must say, it’s nice to be able to thank you in a slightly more calm setting,” said Elsa. “Honestly, I didn’t even get round to sending you a thankyou email for getting my car out of the mud.”

“You know, I’d almost forgotten about that.” Hiccup had only needed steristrips, not even stitches, to put her forehead back together, although there was not much that could be done for her two cracked ribs except rest and painkillers. “That part really _was_ part of my job description…” she frowned, then raised her voice. “Toothless, what have you got there?”

Both of the dragons were determinedly batting at the same small patch of water. As Hiccup stood up, Elsa did the same, leaving Anna and the Night Terror to their apparently mutual obedience training. They crossed towards the lake.

“Triple Stryke!” called Elsa. She hadn’t had pets since she was a child, but remembered roughly how to speak to dogs that had something they shouldn’t. “Put that down!”

“You really should give her a name.”

“We don’t even know what’s happening to her, legally,” she replied. “I mean, she’ll almost certainly have to stay here, but in the long-term…”

“Toothless!” Hiccup sighed as the dragon completely ignored her. “She listens to you, though.”

“Probably just because I was the first person she met who wasn’t a scientist.”

Hiccup sighed as they reached the bank of the river and started along it. Both of the dragons were still determinedly nosing at the same place, occasionally making chirping sounds. “Oh, honestly, Toothless… you know, I think this is still the closest thing to a normal meeting we’ve had. Only took three attempts.”

“Quite the third date,” said Elsa dryly.

Hiccup snorted. “I’d definitely do better dates than this.”

“What, you think that fighting an enormous genetically modified dragon isn’t a good date?”

For all that she kept her tone teasing, she was somewhat regretting making the joke about dates at all. She could feel her cheeks getting pink, the flutter of nervousness in her chest. It wasn’t like she _hadn’t_ dated in her life. It was just that those dates had become significantly fewer in number since coming to Dragon Island, with its insular, closed community – and fewer still since becoming Director. When your social circle was only made up of people who worked for you, it wasn’t exactly conducive to dating.

But Hiccup gave a decidedly winning smile. “I think I could do better. If you’re free from wrestling with lawyers at any point in the near future.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think I’m going to be wrestling with them for a good while yet. I _think_ we’ve got enough evidence that I can start having crews deal with the corpse that we’ve got. At least with the scientific certifications, we can prove that it’ll be helpful to marine ecosystems to seed it as food across the globe, and not harmful.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s really good date talk,” said Hiccup. “Toothless, what have you got there?”

As they drew closer, the dragons looked up guiltily, and Toothless tried to cover whatever it was with one paw. Hiccup hauled him off bodily, and Elsa tried again not to be quite so awed by watching a person push about a tonne of dragon.

“Guys, that’s a _water vole_!” said Hiccup. “And it’ll bite back! Leave it alone. Come on, let’s have some dried anchovy instead. Anchovy?” she repeated, cocking her head to catch Toothless’s eye. “Hmm? Anchovy?”

“Does he understand the words, then?”

“Some of them. When he wants to, at least. Come on, bud, let the water vole be.” Hiccup gave Toothless one last shove out of the river, where he proceeded to shake his paws and flick water off his tail. She turned back to Elsa. “But, really. If you are, uh, free, later this week…”

She looked up hopefully, green eyes shining in the sunlight that had chosen to grace them for a day. And Elsa, chest twisting, hesitated.

“I mean,” Hiccup ran a hand through her hair, as the silence stretched out too long, “I know that you’re sort of my boss… I mean, my boss’s boss’s boss or something, probably, but I’m pretty sure in the circumstances we can sort of say that we’re talking as people instead of employees, here.”

“That’s… really sweet.” Elsa smiled, but could feel how awkward it must look. “I’m just not sure that it’s a good idea, right now. There’s a lot going on.”

Hiccup winced. “I just asked a straight woman on a date again, didn’t I?” she said, with the tone which said that she had done it far, far too often before. Elsa suspected that pretty much every non-straight woman had done, though.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. It’s more that, well, Dragon Island is a very… _closed_ environment. Everyone ends up knowing everything about each other. If it doesn’t work out…”

“If the date goes badly,” Hiccup held up her hands, “we go back to being friends. I think we could manage that, after everything we’ve been through the last few days, right?”

Elsa had to smile at that. “You have a point.” She took a deep breath, and glanced over to where Anna was still nearby. It was more instinct than anything else; her personal life was so minimal that it had been years since she had needed to have a conversation like this. “Look, you should know as well,” she continued, running through the options in her head for how to phrase things. At least this she had some practice at, as well. “I was born with gender identity dysphoria. I’m trans. I transitioned years ago, now, but–”

“Okay,” said Hiccup, with a shrug.

She was not so used, however, to having people interrupt her before she was done with her explanations. Elsa found herself bought to an abrupt halt, and for a few seconds just looked blankly at Hiccup. “Okay?” she said finally.

“I…” Hiccup waved her hands vaguely. “I don’t really know what else to say. Okay. I know what that means, in broad terms at least, and it’s not like it worries me about it. I mean, you heard, I was more worried about you being the _Director_ than anything else. It’s not important to me. I mean,” she caught herself, “obviously it’s important to _you_ , it’s a part of who you are, but it’s not like it’s important for a _date_ and… this would have been a lot better if you’d stopped me a few sentences ago.”

For a moment, Elsa simply stared, then she found a smile spreading across her face. The longer she looked at Hiccup’s hopeful, apologetic expression, the broader it became, and before she knew it she was laughing and Hiccup was running a hand through her hair, looking sheepish.

She collected herself enough to take Hiccup’s hand, which was somewhat wet from steering Toothless away from the vole. “That is… well, that is not a way I’ve ever had that conversation go, but it’s definitely one of the better ones.” Another giggle forced its way out. “Thank you, for saying that.”

“Even if it trailed off into incoherence.”

“Well, it was quite charming incoherence.”

“I’ll take charming,” said Hiccup. Finally, they started back towards where Anna was trying to persuade the Night Terror to shake hands, the two larger dragons in their wake. “You probably get sick of saying that, huh?”

“Hadn’t said it in a while, to be fair. And I guess that I’ve had some practice saying it over the years, which does help.”

Hiccup chuckled. They returned to their chairs, where Hiccup produced a ziplock full of dried anchovies and a slingshot. She sat back and started flicking the anchovies around the field, sending both Toothless and the Triple Stryke scampering after them looking for all the world like a pair of overgrown block labradors.

“So tell me,” said Elsa, eyeing the slingshot. “Do you think you’re ever going to grow out of doing silly thing involving dragons?”

“My father is sixty-one, and he rugby-tackled a Thunderdrum a fortnight ago,” said Hiccup. She flicked an anchovy straight over Toothless’s head, prompting him to spring into the air and manage a full back somersault in search of the treat. “You know, I still haven’t taken you for a proper flight yet. A _nice_ one.”

“I think I can do without that for now, thank you,” Elsa said, chuckling.

“It’s smoother than the motorbike,” Hiccup assured her. “And I’ve got a safety strap.”

Anna peered around. “Hey, that’s basically a seatbelt. You should be fine.”

Elsa rolled her eyes fondly, and momentarily considered taking one of the dried anchovies to flick in Anna’s direction. But that would probably end with Anna getting bowled over by a dragon, and would neither be nice nor fair. She settled for a big-sisterly shake of the head instead. “You’re terrible.”

Hiccup sent two more anchovies flying across the field, the dragons racing after them. “It is… it is like nothing else, though.” Her smile grew distant, and her eyes shone. “You’re part of the wind, the sky. I think it’s as close to being a dragon as a human could ever come.” A blink, and then her voice fell to a tease again. “And who knows? If you like it, then we might be able to introduce dragon rides to the Park. I’d suggest Gronckles. They look like they’d make pretty stable rides.”

“Well, I’m grateful to infer that you haven’t been riding the _Gronckles_ in secret.” Truth be told, she only had the faintest of impressions of the rushing air, the breathless speed. She had to admit to being curious as to how it might feel at a less panic-stricken pace, though. “Maybe when the chaos has died down a bit.”

Hiccup winked. “Now that, I’ll hold you to.”

Then, apparently having decided that Hiccup had paused too long between anchovies, Toothless jumped up to put his front paws in her lap and lick her face enthusiastically. Hiccup spluttered, tried to bat him aside, and ended up spilling the anchovies everywhere instead. The Triple Stryke joined in the flailing, until Hiccup’s chair was knocked over backwards and she rolled over her shoulder and upright, looking with both annoyance and barely-concealed amusement at the pair.

“This is why the keepers nickname this the Isle of Berks, you know,” she commented, brushing off her sleeves. She rubbed a hand across her ribs, but did not seem to be in too much pain. “Because you’ve got to be an utter berk to work here.”

“Honestly?” Elsa smiled. “I think we can agree that _that_ particular trait goes all the way to the top.”


End file.
